The ACLU will file lawsuits unless 107 of Tennessee's public school systems (including Metro Nashville and Knox County) stop the homophobic policy of blocking access to LGBT websites. The school systems must stop the discrimination by April 29.
With a few exceptions, Tennessee schools have a long history of being administered from a cave. That would be a patriarchal bible-thumping cave. The last I heard schools had progressed to the extent that they offered diversity workshops about race and ethnicity and race and ethnicity.
Visions of diversity that include students who fall into LGBT and/or feminist communities are apparently taboo or filtered out of the cave. There was a time when high school students from across the state commented here at TGW. That was before someone in the cave clamped down and filtered out scary words like lesbian and women.
Websites blocked by Tennessee schools include the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). Students looking for advice on how to cope with homophobia are out of luck. Students looking for LGBT jobs, internships, or scholarships are out of luck. Students looking for an education outside the bible-thumping cave are out of luck.
The Tennessee school systems guilty of discrimination do not accept responsibility for censoring educational LGBT sites. They blame the internet filtering service. The internet filtering service blames Tennessee schools.
ABC News -- Last December, when Andrew Emitt starting looking for college scholarships, he turned to his high school library, hoping to find Web sites that would guide him. But the Tennessee 17-year-old is gay, and when he searched for organizations that might be friendly to LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) students, he hit a firewall.
What he discovered is that 107 schools in Tennessee -- including his, Knoxville Central High School -- use software that can block Web sites catering to gay issues. Emitt couldn't find any education sites, but he could find those that promoted "reparative therapy," which promises to change homosexuals to heterosexuals.
"I wasn't looking for anything sexual or inappropriate," said Emitt. "I was looking for information about scholarships for LGBT students, and I couldn't get to it because of this software. . .
"If a gay student wanted to... get information about organizations that can help him, he wouldn't be able to," Metro High School student Eric Austin told ABC's affiliate in Nashville. "It would be like an African American student not being able to get to the NAACP's Web site," said Austin, who is also seeking redress. The ACLU claims these blocks violate the First Amendment and the federal Equal Access Law.
Tennessean: ACLU demands schools allow access to gay Websites
Knoxville News Sentinel: ACLU wants schools to unblock access to gay Web sites / Photo of Gay high school senior Andrew Emitt via ABC News.
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