Prince William County, Virginia Schools Blocking LGBT Websites

I guess it should not come as any surprise that a county like Prince William County, Virginia, which would elect a gay-hating religious extremist like Del. Bob Marshall to the Virginia General Assembly would engage in Internet filtering to block LGBT students from accessing any LGBT related websites from school computers. After all, Marshall has stated before that he would like to drive all LGBT Virginians from the state (he'd probably like to include immigrants, Hispanics and most blacks in the group that he'd deport as well). The map above from the ACLU indicates that the problem of web filtering is widespread. The goal of such filtering is two-fold: kissing up to Christofascist parents and isolating LGBT students who might otherwise, God forbid, realize their rights are being trampled upon. Here are highlights from the ACLU:
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The American Civil Liberties Union and its regional affiliates today sent letters to schools in Michigan, Texas, Pennsylvania and Virginia demanding they stop viewpoint-based censorship of web content geared toward the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities.
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The letters were sent as part of the nationwide “Don’t Filter Me” campaign, in which the ACLU has teamed with Yale Law School to combat illegal censorship of pro-LGBT information on public school computer systems.
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“There is no legitimate reason why any public school should be using an anti-LGBT filter,” said Joshua Block, staff attorney at the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual & Transgender Project. “This is not a case where overbroad filters are accidentally filtering out LGBT websites. 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.
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The campaign asks students to check to see if web content geared toward LGBT communities – a frequent target of censorship in schools – is blocked by their schools’ web browsers, and then report instances of censorship to the ACLU LGBT Project.
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When used by a public school, programs that block all LGBT content violate First Amendment rights to free speech, as well as the Equal Access Act, which requires equal access to school resources for all extracurricular clubs. This means that gay-straight alliances and LGBT support groups must have the same access to national organizational websites that help them to function, just as other groups such as the Key Club and the chess club are able to access their national websites. By blocking access to LGBT websites, schools deny helpful information to gay-straight alliances and other support groups that could be vital for troubled LGBT youth who either don’t have access to the Internet at home or do not feel safe accessing such information on their home computers.
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“Unblocking individual sites is not a viable solution,” said Block. “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. It’s unfair to put students in the difficult position of asking special permission before being allowed to access LGBT viewpoints. Public schools have a duty to provide students with viewpoint-neutral access to the Internet.”