Reverend Donald Wildmon's American Family Association -- the influential ministry that has organized boycotts against the Disney corporation, Levi-Strauss, Pepsi, and ABC for perceived moral violations -- found itself at the other end of the scale of judgement when it discovered that the most popular Internet filtering software, The Learning Company's Cyber Patrol, had recently added the AFA Web site to its "CyberNOT list," making it inaccessible to users who choose to block sites deemed offensive or inappropriate for children.
Cyber Patrol lumped AFA.net into its "Intolerance" category, along with such sites as the David Duke Report, God Hates Fags and WhitePower.com. To be added to the CyberNOT list in that category, Cyber Patrol criteria stipulate that a site must include "pictures or text advocating prejudice or discrimination against any race, color, national origin, religion, disability or handicap, gender, or sexual orientation."
At issue are statements on the AFA site that oppose homosexual rights. In a booklet downloadable on the site called Homosexuality in America: Exposing the Myths, the AFA equates open displays of affection by homosexuals with public profanity, claims that "homosexuality and AIDS are inseparably connected," and declares that "a homosexual is more likely to be a pedophile than a heterosexual is."
AFA spokesman Buddy Smith calls the blocking of the site "hypocritical," saying that if the AFA's opposition to the "homosexual agenda" makes it worthy of being added to the CyberNOT list, then other sites, such as Digital Queers, should be blocked for their opposition to the AFA's "Christian agenda."
Smith says that when he learned the site had been blocked, he asked Learning Company representative William Killroy, "'Can someone oppose the homosexual agenda and not be blocked?' He said, 'That's a good question -- but I can't answer it.'"
Smith disputes the notion that the AFA site espouses hatred against gay people.
"We're a Christian organization. We love homosexuals, because we love people," Smith insists. "And because we love people, we're standing with the time-honored beliefs that the scriptures uphold."
Susan Getgood, spokeswoman for The Learning Company, says the AFA site has been reviewed twice by Learning Company researchers -- once after receiving a request for appeal from the AFA. "The material [the researchers] found on the Web site met the criteria of intolerance," she says.
There will be a final opportunity for appeal at a meeting of The Learning Company's oversight committee on 9 June. The committee comprises 12 people from outside the firm, including a schoolteacher and representatives from both Morality in Media and the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. The AFA was invited to attend, but is declining to do so.
"When I put the pencil to the expenditure of flying to Framingham, I just couldn't do it. That would be eight or nine hundred bucks we'd be throwing to the wind," says Smith. "The bottom line is, there's somebody [at The Learning Company] who doesn't like us and said, 'We'll put the block on them.'"
The AFA generally supports the use of blocking software, and has a business alliance with Log-On Data, creators of a product that competes with Cyber Patrol called X-Stop. X-Stop not only blocks Internet sites, but can be set to reroute or censor email and documents in word processing programs on the fly, replacing forbidden words -- including anti-gay epithets -- with asterisks.
X-Stop and a related Log-On product called R3 Tunnelmaster are used by parents and systems administrators to block access to sites with offerings ranging from porn to humor to news, with a specific category for sites containing "information on self-awareness, spirituality, healing arts, holistic living, junk culture, fringe media, art perspectives, etc.," according to a company statement.
The Learning Company's Getgood points out that her firm has caught flak from both the far-right and the far-left ends of the political spectrum for the sites they've chosen to add to the CyberNOT list.
"We're keeping a very solid middle ground, and that's right where we belong," she says.
David Goldman, the director of an online group called HateWatch, says the dispute over the AFA site highlights the fact that "the whole notion that parents should abdicate responsibility to government agencies or blocking software is ludicrous ... What did parents do when their kids were handed bible tracts that said 'Fags will burn in Hell'? They sat them down and said, 'In this family, we have certain values.' There's no substitute for that kind of discussion."
