AP Images/Coshocton Tribune, Dante Smith |
The
American Civil Liberties Union has demanded a Georgia school district
to deactivate its Web filter that currently blocks student access to
websites in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender category.
The
Alliance Defense Fund sent a letter Friday urging Gwinnett County
Public Schools to reject the ACLU’s insistence, explaining that the
district is well within its legal rights to keep the filter in place,
especially since deactivating the filter would expose students to
sites with sexually explicit content.
“School
districts shouldn’t be bullied into exposing students to sexually
explicit materials,” says ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “This
latest scare tactic—under the facade of illegal censorship—is
just another act of intimidation designed to forward the ACLU’s
radical sexual agenda for children.”
The
letter from ADF—a
legal
alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations
defending the right of people to freely live out their faith—provides
the district with a list of sexually graphic sites, including sites
with pornographic images and sex advice that would be accessible to
students if the district agreed to the ACLU’s demand.
The
ACLU threatened to sue the district if it does not disable its LGBT
filter and claims that it violates students’ First Amendment
protected rights and the Equal Access Act. On the other hand, ADF
attorneys argue that these allegations lack merit and that the
district has broad authority over what materials students may access
on the Internet.
ADF
also explains that the ACLU’s demand could result in the district
violating the Children’s Internet Protection Act, a federal law
that prohibits libraries receiving CIPA funds from allowing minors to
access harmful sexual materials on the Internet.
While
the ACLU claims that the district should disable the LGBT filter
because of the “epidemic of LGBT youth suicides and bullying,”
the ADF letter points out that the ACLU’s letter threatening to sue
identifies no instances of bullying or suicide at schools within the
district and that such problems, when they do exist, are not solved
by disabling Internet filters.
“The
idea that Internet filters somehow result in student suicides is
preposterous, and the ACLU should be ashamed for making such a
connection,” says Jeremy Tedesco, ADF legal counsel. “The ACLU
cannot mask its attempts to turn school computers into porn portals
for children with a supposed concern for bullying and suicides.
“Parents
expect schools to be places where their children will learn
knowledge, information and skills that will make them productive
members of society, not places where they can access pornography.”
