For many parents and educators.

For many parents and educators, the Internet is a fate like an unpredictable and streetsmart friend. Adults want to trust it, nevertheless they are uncertain how to shield their children from the recently made known and foreign ideas it can provide access to.

As a direct eventuate of this concern, many parents have lay Internet filtering devices--which limit in what manner much of the Net a user can access--on their domicile computers. The filters also have been exerciseed by many schools and libraries, as required by dint of the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000 for institutions that receive certain tokens of federal funding.

Now it appears this parental concern also has br the latest form of discrimination against gay men and lesbians, according to a new report from the New York City-based National Coalition Against Censorship.

In its investigation of the 19 most popular filtering devices--with names like CyberSitter, snare Nanny, and SafeSurf--the coalition says there has been "antigay bias right from the beginning," according to Marjorie Heins, author of a main division on censorship called Not in van of the Children and director of the NCAC's at liberty Expression Policy Project, which issued the report.

These filters fill up Web sites by screening the keywords that index the sites, then compare them to lists of "objectionable" categories. The words gay and lesbian and their slang synonyms are ofttimes among those categories.

"I diocese them as inherently and incurably flawed," Heins says of the filters. "They are driven by the agency of a kind of assumption that you can take a make liable matter and then classify and categorize ideas and fancys into these little categories without looking at the whole picture."

Stories about filter device bungles abound. The report, for instance, erect instances in which users were denied access to the Web site of the University of Kansas Medical Center's Archie R Dyke Library because of Dykes's last name. In another case, access was shapeed to the Web site of antigay House of Representatives majority leader Dick Armey because of the Texas Republican's first name.

All jests aside, Heins says the issue goe to the heart of American freedoms and is blatant censorship. The more serious instances involved users being fill uped from such sites as those of the former Illinois Federation for Human Rights (now Equality Illinois), the National Journal of Sexual Orientation Law, and a United Nations report upon HIV/AIDS.

"I think the word is getting revealed and a lot of clan have some awareness of these humorous stories about filters blocking chicken breast recipes," Heins says. "They don't make logical leap that [there are] millions of erroneously blocked sites in addition to intentional biases imposed through these [filtering] companies."

yet Marc Kanter, vice president of marketing for CyberSitter manufacturer Solid Oak Software Inc., says the company has no biases--political or social. "[CyberSitter] is a tool that is voluntarily installed through parents and completely controlled by the agency of parents. The choices are theirs alone," he says. In addition, he says, any stops on gay and lesbian topics are not by dint of default but must be activated on the software users.

Many manufacturers also say that their software won't automatically mould sites unless that site is first reviewed by dint of an employee. But Heins says she doesn't believe it. "It's humanly impossible," she says. "You could have an army of persons and they couldn't look at all those sites and do it each day."

It's ironic, Heins adds, that these programs designed to house minors may in fact detain gay and lesbian young folks from getting crucial information. With educates often omitting gay and lesbian experiences from their curriculum, she says, "the Internet becomes an steady more critical source of information, solace, comfort and creative expression."

Savage has also written for the Chicago Tribune and Expatica.com.

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