Brody's Notes... ACLU Wants Students To Report LGBT Filters & Blocked Websites

By Brody Levesque (Washington DC) FEB 17 | The American Civil Liberties Union's LGBT Project is asking high school students across the United States to see if their schools are illegally blocking certain LGBTQ sites.

In three separate cases in 2010, the Nashville based ACLU Tennessee branch sued schools that were blocking or filtering LGBT positive/informational or organisations' sites but were not blocking anti-gay organisations and their sites such as PFOX or NARTH.

A spokesperson for the ACLU said that many LGBT students don't have access to the internet at home or they may not want to use a shared family computer to access sites like these and risk outing themselves. He noted that students have the right to access this information at school. 

A technology writer for CNET.com notes that frequently the web filters block out LGBT sites for using words like "gay" and "lesbian" based on an algorithm, not often an intentional decision and that web administrators might not know that they're blocked. For example he said, Google Instant blocks some LGBT words because the search results likely would be pornographic or explicit images would appear.

In the following video, the ACLU says that if you're a student at a high school check out your school's computers to see if you can access the suggested LGBT websites. Also, check if you're not a high school student and see if your local library, community center, or college blocks LGBT websites, which can be important places for people who aren't in high school but don't have internet access to get information: