Fun_People Archive
15 Jul
What goes around...

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Wed, 15 Jul 98 17:04:07 -0700
To: Fun_People
Precedence: bulk
Subject: What goes around...

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649
Forwarded-by: nev@bostic.com
Forwarded-by: guy@netapp.com (Guy Harris)

The June 11 issue of The New York Times has, in its "Circuits" section, an
article titled "Christian Group Feels Net Filter's Wrath":

      Concerned that children have easy access to pornography and other
 inappropriate material on the Internet, the American Family Association,
 a conservative, Christian group, has been a vocal supporter of filtering
 products, software meant to cordon off the nastier corners of cyberspace
 from users, especially young children.

      So it was with some surprise that officials at the group recently
 discovered that their association's own Web pages were being lumped
 together with skinhead, white supremacist and other "intolerant" sites
 blocked by a popular filter called Cyber Patrol.

      The American Family Association Web site ran into trouble with Cyber
 Patrol because researchers at the company decided that it met the filter's
 definition of intolerance, which includes discrimination based on sexual
 orientation.  Typical of the passages Cyber Patrol found offensive,
 according to Casey M.  Smith, Jr., executive assistant at the American
 Family Association, based in Tupelo, Miss., was the following: "Every time
 our young people hear about a 'gay' pride or 'coming out' celebration, they
 become less sensitive to the perversity of homosexuality and more likely
 to experiment with it."

© 1998 Peter Langston