A New Jersey school district has removed filters that blocked lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender-related websites after the American Civil Liberties Union began asking questions.
The inquiry is part of a national “Don’t Filter Me” campaign by the ACLU and Yale Law School to combat illegal censorship of pro-LGBT information on public school computer systems, ACLU representatives said Monday.
“Public schools have a duty to provide students with viewpoint-neutral access to the Internet,” said Joshua Block, staff attorney at the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender Project.
The Vineland School District in Cumberland County had been using filtering software provided by Blue Coat, which has a specialized filter called “LGBT.” The district removed the filters from its high school computers on March 31, 2011 – just days after the ACLU of New Jersey submitted an open records request for documents about filtering software.
The district subsequently agreed to remove the LGBT filter from middle school computers, as well.
ACLU affiliates in Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania and Virginia sent letters today demanding school districts in their states stop similar viewpoint-based censorship of web content geared toward LGBT communities.
“This is not a case where overbroad filters are accidentally filtering out LGBT websites,” Block said. “These filters are designed to discriminate and are programmed specifically to target LGBT-related content that would not otherwise be blocked as sexually explicit or inappropriate.
“As long as the anti-LGBT filter is in place, students will be confronted with a demeaning and stigmatizing message that the site has been blocked on account of its LGBT-related content.”
Two students at Vineland High School had been complaining to their school for three years about various LGBT websites being blocked, the ACLU said. READ MORE....
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