Diane Robertson
Parents did you know that the ACLU has launched a campaign they call, “Don’t Filter Me”? They are asking students across the nation to check out five websites at their schools to see if they are filtering them and then to report back to the ACLU.
These five websites are:
dayofsilence.org
itgetsbetter.org
thetrvorproject.org
gsanetwork.org
glsen.org
These websites are not necessarily sexually explicit. But the ACLU had more to this agenda then to get schools to allow just these five websites.
When the ACLU asked the Camdenton School District in Missouri to allow these websites, the school said they would. However, this school district’s filter blocks all sexually explicit websites. That means that a number of other LGBT websites with sexually explicit material were automatically blocked.
So what did the ACLU do? They joined in a federal lawsuit with some LGBT organizations whose websites are blocked by the filter– Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbian and Gays (PFLAG), the Matthew Shepard Foundation, Campus Pride, and DignityUSA, a Catholic LGBT organization—to get rid of the sexuality filter the school used. That is the filter that blocks thousands of pornographic, obscene and explicit websites on school computers.
According to the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), ”the ACLU got the judge to buy in. She held that blocking the websites was unconstitutional ‘viewpoint’ discrimination and stated: the filtering software ‘allows’ access to websites expressing a negative view toward LGBT individuals by categorizing them as ‘religion’, but filters out positive viewpoints toward LGBT issues by categorizing them as ‘sexuality’.”
Again siding with the ACLU the judge stated that there was “direct evidence” that the school “intentionally” discriminated against this “viewpoint”. The direct evidence was that one school official wanted parental consent before students were allowed to view these websites.
What do this federal judge and the ACLU want your children to know about? David Cortman of the ADF gives a couple minor examples:
Let’s look at just a few of these “positive viewpoints” that were being blocked.
These websites include, among other things, recommended books for children to read. Dr. Seuss, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Percy Jackson? Not quite. How about Reflections of a Rock Lobster that talks about first graders having serial homosexual encounters in school restrooms. Or Queer 13 which includes a thirteen year old having a graphic, violent homosexual encounter with an adult in a school restroom. For obvious reasons, I will not go on. Suffice it to say that many other sites that the “sexuality” filter used to block also feature photographs, “how to” guides, and a host of sexually inappropriate materials.
Parents, do you know what websites your children have access to while at school? Please get involved in your local school. The loud voice of the ACLU should not be the only voice that is heard in determining what websites the schools must allow.