The Pentagon Says LGBT Sites Are Blocked For "Operational Security Reasons"

As readers may recall, it recently was shown that the Pentagon has been blocking LGBT sites on government and military computers even thought far right wing political sites are freely accessible as are other less than main stream sites.  Now, the Pentagon is trying to claim that LGBT sites and blogs have been banned for "operational security reasons."  Apparently, Tea Party and quasi-Nazi and near white supremacist sites are fine.  Obviously, the storyline doesn't add up.  Think Progress looks at the Pentagon's ludicrous explanation.  Here are excerpts:

AMERICAblog has been raising awareness over the past week about a problematic Internet filtering problem at the Pentagon, and rightfully so. Apparently, a preponderance of LGBT news sites have been blocked by the DOD, including AMERICAblog, Towleroad, Good As You, The Bilerico Project, Pam’s House Blend, The Advocate, and the Human Rights Campaign’s blog.

 Though the filtering itself is a problem, the Pentagon’s response has been that much more troubling.
On Friday, the DOD released a statement on its Facebook page completely obfuscating the situation:

We’ve received some questions/comment recently about DOD’s web access policies, and wanted to provide this statement:

The Department of Defense does not block LGBT websites. The pages referenced in several recent articles were denied access based on web filters blocking the “Blog/Personal Pages” category, not the specific sites themselves. While individuals on a DoD system may visit portions of the main websites (i.e., www.towleroad.com, www.AMERICAblog.com), certain additional links/pages – to include personal blogs – are blocked. Personal pages and blogs are blocked in accordance with DoD policy allowing military commanders the option to restrict access to personal pages for operational security reasons.

As AMERICAblog’s John Aravosis points out, this statement does not withstand scrutiny on multiple counts. First of all, the filtration software specifically identifies the sites as “LGBT” as a reason for being blocked. Secondly, this doesn’t explain why plenty of anti-gay conservative blogs and personal pages are not blocked, including RedState, Breitbart, the Family Research Council’s blog, the National Organization for Marriage’s blog, and Ann Coulter’s and Glenn Beck’s personal sites. There is also no explanation how LGBT content could threaten national security, .  .  .  .

It also seems that there is little consistency throughout the system, with different divisions being controlled differently. Aravosis has identified that the DOD uses a filtration software known as Blue Coat, the same software used by a number of oppressive regimes and LGBT-unfriendly countries, including Syria, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Qatar. Blue Coat has also problematically blocked LGBT sites in many school districts, including anti-bullying and anti-suicide resources like The Trevor Project.

It remains unclear then why the software includes a filter for LGBT content at all, except for use by those who are anti-LGBT.

Over the weekend, Pentagon Press Secretary George Little issued another statement that improves a bit over the first, promising to investigate the claims of censorship:

Recent reports have suggested that the Pentagon is blocking access to LGBT related websites. The Department of Defense does not block websites based on LGBT content. [...]   No filter is perfect and some sites may have unnecessarily been blocked. The Department Chief Information Officer will work with relevant components to address these situations.

Still, neither statement addresses the way progressive LGBT content is uniquely blocked when conservative anti-gay content is not, nor explains the validity — past or present — for such filtering. If the only answers ever offered are suggestions that LGBT content threatens national security, then the only conclusion left will be that the Pentagon is itself anti-LGBT. 

 

Lets be candid.  Many in the senior ranks of the Pentagon ARE anti-gay.  There is no other legitimate reason for the targeting of LGBT blogs and sites is occurring.  Especially given the fact that incendiary far right blogs and sites are not filtered.

Is Don'T Ask, Don't Give Working?

An opinion piece by a gay conservative on AOLNews suggests that those in the LGBT blogosphere and the "don't Ask, Don't Give" campaign endorsed by an number of big time blogs - as well as this blog - may well be doing more to get things moving on LGBT issues than all of the "make-nice: efforts of our self-anointed leaders at HRC. The sad reality is that most politicians will not do something merely because it is the right thing to do. Instead they act either to secure continued support/votes or to stop efforts that will be potentially harmful to their political careers. And since money is the mother's milk of politics, threats to stop the flow of money is often taken far more seriously than HRC statements condemning various policies. Here are some column highlights:
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While President Barack Obama's decision to move forward with the elimination of the military's much hated "don't ask, Don't tell" policy has attracted widespread coverage, the reason behind the sudden push hasn't. So, what exactly got the White House wheels in motion on DADT?
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It certainly wasn't the Human Rights Campaign, which has been playing a game of make-nice with Democrats in Congress and the Obama administration. Its leader, Joe Solmonese, ever quick to criticize Republicans when they fall short on gay issues, has been tepid in his criticism of the president when Obama failed to keep campaign promises to the gay community.
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It may instead have been an effort by a coterie of liberal bloggers and activists calling "for a temporary moratorium on DNC donations" who made the administration realize there was a price for its inaction.
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The fledgling movement, which adopted the motto "Don't Ask, Don't Give" and has attracted the likes of legendary gay rights activist David Mixner, aimed at discouraging donations to the party until the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and the repeal of both "don't ask, don't tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. Mostly left-of-center bloggers at such sites as Pam's House Blend, Queerty and AmericaBlogGay pressed their readers to boycott the Democratic Party.
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Their actions generated a lot of heat in the community, culminating in a cover story in the Advocate, a monthly gay newsmagazine. And threatened with this loss of revenue from some of their most reliable (and affluent) supporters, the Obama administration surely realized it needed to act quickly on one of those issues, lest it lose a significant chunk of its financial support and alienate some of the party's most enthusiastic backers.
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So, this gay conservative blogger's hat is off to his fellows on the other side of the political aisle. Unlike the heads of the establishment gay organizations, they didn't kowtow to the leaders of the political party they prefer and refused to accept their promises of action on some undefined date in the future. They told the administration there would be consequences for its failure to act. And it acted.

White House Belatedly Tries to Soothe Liberals’ Anger

John Aravosis has a post at America Blog that looks at the pathetic efforts recently being made by the White House to soothe voters who have been kicked in the teeth so far by Obama's failure to deliver on campaign promises. As John notes, some lame boiler plate e-mails have been sent out to the DNC Organizing America data base - I received one myself and asked that I be removed from the address list - but in terms of real, meaningful action, Obama and the Congressional Democrats remain missing in action. The only positive may be that Obama is belatedly waking up to the fact that he might just not be reelected in 2012 if he doesn't start to deliver. And, I'm sorry, but until ENDA is passed and signed into law or DADT and/or DOMA are repealed, I will not feel that Obama has kept his campaign promises. As the saying goes, fool me once, shame on you - fool me twice, shame on me. I personally do not plan on being played for a sucker a second time. In the perhaps unlikely event the GOP doesn't nominate a lunatic opponent to Obama, Mr. Obama could end up a one term president. Here are highlights from John's post:

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There's an article in Roll Call (sub. req.) titled, White House Hopes to Soothe Liberals’ Angst, which begins:
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President Barack Obama is confronting a threat to his re-election as members of his base increasingly voice concern about his policies.
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Obama has faced a mini-rebellion from liberals after he went along with a decision to drop a public insurance option — and then its substitute, a “buy-in” expansion of Medicare — from the Senate health care bill. Liberals are also concerned about the climate change deal that he agreed to in Copenhagen and his decision to inject 30,000 additional troops into Afghanistan.
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But the White House has been taking steps to bandage the wounds.
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It is, however, unclear from this article what exactly those steps are, besides a couple of emails sent to the DNC's Organizing for America list: . . .
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To be clear, the President and his team are worried about the base for his reelection in 2012, not the congressional races in 2010. I think it's safe to say that it's going to take more than email messages from the President and David Plouffe to fire up the base. Words won't be enough. Actions are required. And, the best action the President could take would be to follow through on his campaign promises.

No one is expecting Obama to do more than he promised, but we are expecting him to do what he promised. . . . The base is watching and waiting -- and grumpy.

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John, very well said.

Hillary Clinton's Silence Condones Gay Bashing

I will be most candid - I do not like Hillary Clinton or her sleazy husband and I am liking her less and less with every passing day. Her latest insult to the LGBT community - besides her near inability to utter the words "gay" or "lesbian" without choking - is her silence as North Carolina Governor Easley maked a disparaging remarks using the word "pansy." A number of bloggers have taken Hillary to task on this, but perhaps the most biting comments I have seen so far are from John Aravosis at America Blog who had this to say about Hillary's increasing phony and cynical campaign stunts. Those in the LGBT community who continue to blindly - and in my view foolishly - support Hillary need to get their heads out of the sand and wake up to the fact that LGBT voters mean absolutely nothing to her except a source of much needed funds and possible votes. It's all about her and Bill and their sense of entitlement to whatever they want. Here are highlights from John's comments:

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Pansy? Standing next to Clinton, her top surrogate in North Carolina actually used the word "pansy" this morning.

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After touring a bio-manufacturing training center, Gov. Easley, First Lady of North Carolina Mary Easley and Clinton held a ceremony at NC State University. The Governor formally expressed his support saying that there was "nothing I love more than a strong powerful woman." Easley concluded his remarks saying Clinton -- "makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy".

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In case anyone has been living under a rock, pansy is slang for "fag." Pan·sy:

a. Used as a disparaging term for a man or boy who is considered effeminate.

b. Used as a disparaging term for a homosexual man.

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Now why would Hillary embrace gay-bashing to help her campaign? Well, putting aside the Clintons' history of embracing gay-bashing when it suited them, take a look at what Ben Smith wrote this morning:

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Easley is a meaningful ally in the culture war she's waging against Senator Barack Obama, as she seeks to cast him as a hopelessly unelectable liberal elitist...

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Oh, so Hillary has launched a "culture war" against Obama. And what are the three elements of the culture wars? God, guns, and gays. Hillary already pulled the God and gun card on Obama in Pennsylvania, where she couldn't even say when she last went to church, and then claimed she was a hunter after a lifetime as one of America's top gun control advocates. And now she's gay-bashing. And actually, she started subtly gay-bashing a while back. Remember all of her "San Francisco" references? Then there was her top aides calling Obama supporters "latte sippers who only care about "feelings" (i.e., they're a bit effeminate and effete). (Then again, look who's advising her.)

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It's ironic. Hillary is afraid to use the word "gay," and gets visibly uncomfortable when answering questions about gay issues. But using slurs for "fag"" doesn't bother her in the least. Hillary and her people will say anything to get elected.

Hillary's Gay Problem - Why Can't She Even Utter the Word?

I have been complaining for a long time now about the fact that the LGBT community is invisible if one looks at Hillary Clinton's campaign website or listen to her statements to general audiences. We simply do not exist. In contrast, on Obama's website and in his commenets to general audiences we are frequently mentioned. Nonetheless a large segment of the LGBT community acts as if Hillary is some kind of would be savior. Personally, I believe that if she will not mention us now except in interviews with gay media outlets that rarely are viewed by the general public, it is lunacy to expect her to battle for LGBT issues if she becomes the nominee or is ultimately elected. The Clintons sold out the LGBT community with DOMA and DADT and I expect Hillary will do it again - but only after collecting as much money from gays as possible. In short, shes play the LGBT community as a bunch of simpletons. Fortunately, others are starting to echo my concerns, particularly at America Blog that also has a video of Hillary's interview on LOGO where she can barely say the word "gay." Here are some highlights:

Last month, a gay Philadelphian LGBT publisher raised the issue that Senator Obama, though often addressing LGBT issues and including us in his major speeches, was not granting his publication an exclusive interview. Senator Obama quickly addressed the issue and granted an exclusive interview to the national LGBT publication, The Advocate.

Tonight, following the Pennsylvania Primary, Senator Obama once again showed his commitment to our community by including us in his address to the nation. Senator Clinton, speech, once again, did not include us, and it brings up the issue that hers never do.

Obama mentions us in his speeches, a lot. And yes, Hillary will say those are just words. But you know, Obama was willing to chastize his own community for their homophobia in a speech given on Martin Luther King's birthday in MLK's own church to thousands of black leaders. Those are words that matter. Here's to hoping that Hillary can find it in herself to utter the word gay (and even lesbian) in a setting that isn't limited to a gay audience.

[N}otice how repeatedly in the interview Hillary hesitates and stumbles at places where you would naturally expect her to say the word "gay" - she doesn't say it - she kind of stops, doesn't say gay, then moves on. She's not comfortable saying the word. Obama is. I think that tells you something about how they feel about the issue inside.