Slog Comments
Question for Schools Districts That Discriminate Against LGBT Students...
2
I am beginning to feel the same way about these ACLU lawsuits as I feel about the idea of yanking blue subsidies for schools and the like to red areas... Yeah, the fuckers deserve it and I hope it'll teach 'em a lesson, but it just seems to hurt the kids and entrench the assholes.
5
Why is it that America must be dragged into the modern era kicking and screaming painful step after every painful step of the way, fighting against every single advancement in equality and civil rights?
6
My guess is that the software blocks any reference to sodomy. Would you want your kid to gain access to porn, gay or otherwise, at school? You can't program "unless it's part of a supreme court decision" into blocking software.
7
@6 Then how is the Bowers decision accessible and not Lawrence? It can't be because the word "sodomy" as s"sodomy" is used throughout Bowers.
And as the ACLU has pointed out, the filter the school is using is fails at its intended purpose of filtering porn.
And as the ACLU has pointed out, the filter the school is using is fails at its intended purpose of filtering porn.
8
If that were true then it would also restrict access to the antigay sites and... you know. Porn sites.
9
As for why, school administrators are more concerned about local political and social pressures than they are about the law and justice etc. If they do the right thing on their own, they take the heat. If they wait to be ordered by the courts, they can blame it on busybody lawyers from the ACLU.
It makes all the sense in the world for them to piss away a bunch of somebody else's money on a futile legal defense.
It makes all the sense in the world for them to piss away a bunch of somebody else's money on a futile legal defense.
10
@6 - Maybe this is my ignorance talking (I'm not much of a consumer of guy-on-guy porn), but I don't remember ever seeing the word "sodomy" on any porn site I've ever visited.
@Dan - Thanks for reminding us of all the hard work the ACLU staff is doing - maybe put a "Donate to the ACLU Here" link in this post?
@Dan - Thanks for reminding us of all the hard work the ACLU staff is doing - maybe put a "Donate to the ACLU Here" link in this post?
12
Speaking of that particular Supreme Court decision, did everyone already read Dahlia Lithwick's fantastic piece about all of the surprising nuances of its staging in the New Yorker last month?
14
@11 One note: If you want your donation to go specifically to LGBT rights work, you should use this link instead: www.aclu.org/LGBTdonate
15
@6:
You most certainly can program filtering software that way. This is NOT a case of failed technology - it is clearly and most certainly a case of failed bigotry.
You most certainly can program filtering software that way. This is NOT a case of failed technology - it is clearly and most certainly a case of failed bigotry.
17
Just to add to @11, you can also volunteer:
http://www.aclu.org/action-center
You can use this page to find your local ACLU branch and sign up with them. They need help with everything from stuffing envelopes to web design. People in the Chicago area, your local ACLU office is at 180 N. Michigan Ave Ste 2300, the next volunteer night is April 18th beginning at 5:30 pm (they provide food, too), and you can sign up here: http://www.aclu-il.org/volunteer-night-1…
http://www.aclu.org/action-center
You can use this page to find your local ACLU branch and sign up with them. They need help with everything from stuffing envelopes to web design. People in the Chicago area, your local ACLU office is at 180 N. Michigan Ave Ste 2300, the next volunteer night is April 18th beginning at 5:30 pm (they provide food, too), and you can sign up here: http://www.aclu-il.org/volunteer-night-1…
20
@12, thank you for that link! Little known fact: Paul Smith, whom that article says plaintiffs chose very carefully to argue Lawrence v. Texas, is a longtime friend and former Jenner & Block law partner of Obama's Solicitor General Don Verilli, charged with defending health care reform before the Supreme Court in the marathon hearings that began today.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/us/pol…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/24/us/pol…
22
"The lawyers and staff at the ACLU are the unsung heroes of the movement to end discrimination against LGBT students in America's public schools."
Unsung heroes? Puh-lease.
The ACLU does enormously great work, but their lawyers and staff are paid to do this and they have decent jobs in major cities. Hardly heroes, just good decent lawyers with a sense of justice and a desire to uphold the constitution at non-profit wages.
A hero is someone with unusual courage, or bravery, making a sacrifice, or undertaking substantial risk in their jobs, or going well beyond the norm to help another. The true heroes in ACLU cases are the individuals who bring their cases *to* the ACLU and allow themselves and their lives to be test cases, often opening up themselves to years of unpaid time and public scrutiny.
Get it right, Dan!
Unsung heroes? Puh-lease.
The ACLU does enormously great work, but their lawyers and staff are paid to do this and they have decent jobs in major cities. Hardly heroes, just good decent lawyers with a sense of justice and a desire to uphold the constitution at non-profit wages.
A hero is someone with unusual courage, or bravery, making a sacrifice, or undertaking substantial risk in their jobs, or going well beyond the norm to help another. The true heroes in ACLU cases are the individuals who bring their cases *to* the ACLU and allow themselves and their lives to be test cases, often opening up themselves to years of unpaid time and public scrutiny.
Get it right, Dan!
24
This is not about Camdenton High School? this is about some moron that works at the school and is in charge of said computers. the school looses all of the students loose and the only one who wins is the moron and the ACLU in their pantie pulling contest of Far Right Vs. Far Left as I don't have a name for this particular morn we could assume its Rick Perry.
25
And once more I believe the term "Gay" and or anything using the term Gay is not allowed as its been "advertised" that its usage is demeaning and or "hate" motivated.
What we have here is a failure to communicate. I don't like it any more than you do. but He wants it so he gets it.
What we have here is a failure to communicate. I don't like it any more than you do. but He wants it so he gets it.
30
The filtering software used likely creates a list of visited sites that an administrator at the school can call up. It is then an easy matter to restrict particular sites that the normal filter misses. We used to see this happen all the time.
So, the thing to do is to is for the ACLU lawyers to subpoena the list of those sites that have been manually input (or, a time-dated log of the list). That will shed a light on the thoughts of the school administrator in question.
So, the thing to do is to is for the ACLU lawyers to subpoena the list of those sites that have been manually input (or, a time-dated log of the list). That will shed a light on the thoughts of the school administrator in question.
31
How is it that the ACLU is having a difficult time finding an IT security expert to testify that this school board is full of bigot fools? Since I am an IT person specializing in social engineering and network security I can easily point out exactly the flaws in the schools arguments and show bigotry and negligence.
First, we start with a simple fact: Internet filters no longer use word or picture algorithm filtering, or in lamens terms, filters do not automatically filter a site based upon the images or words within the site. Why? Because we tried it, and it failed, hard. If you filter breast, you stop breast cancer sites. If you filter cock, you filter farming and Chinese astrology sites. The filters would rarely stop a porn site, and many many porn sites actively work to bypass those filters. They were really only successful in filtering legitimate content, which is why they've been abandoned.
How do filters work then? They really on a series of lists, that very literally try and catalogue and classify every site on the Internet. How does this make for negligence on the part of the school? Because it is impossible for a single human being to construct and maintain lists like that, it takes a team of Internet researchers to do so. And the problem sites, the ones the lists are constantly updated to deal with? Porn sites and malicious sites. The law dictates they block porn, and they specifically picked a filter that could not possibly block porn, and that's the negligence. But it gets worse, by not having filtering software that can block malicious sites (sites with Virii or social engineering sites) they have opened the schools network to attack, and likely have incurred high costs as a result (each viral infection would require it staff to resolve, and that takes money) plus, students and staff have no protection against malicious sites, so the possibility of ID theft is high.
Bigotry is even easier to see though. Like in the case of one court case being blocked but not another. That is very intentional blocking of content based on idealogical content. And you can simply look at the lists to figure it out. Normal filters will say: all .gov addresses are allowed, they might be more specific and allow all IPs owned by the gov to be allowed as well. But we know that this filter actively looks into sections of the supreme courts .gov domain, to implicitly deny the Lawrence v Texas case. They cannot argue accidental filtering based on words, since whatever words contained in Lawrence, would be the same as those in Bowers (homosexuality, sodomy, blah blah) AND the lists rarely ever single out subsections of domains, especially not .gov domains, and especially not very specific content. (a rough equivalent would be an apartment allowing pets, but not golden retrievers, everything but golden retrievers.)
Sure, they can attempt to argue they didn't know, but that would be a lie. They got a complaint, surely they looked into the lists and noticed the oddness? If not, then negligence and still bigotry (for not investigating if pro gay sites were blocked). And seriously, they HAD to have noticed that a section of a .gov address was listed in a list entitled: sexually explicit.
And for the people who have asked, yes, most filtering software keeps logs about anyone trying to get to a blocked site, most actually keep logs of EVERYTHING that people accessed, blocked or not. But, these things can be turned off, so that they do not log at all. And considering the fly by night place they got the software from... It might be designed to not log at all.
But none the less, there are the lists, just examine those. They can also see how the school dealt with the lists (organizations can always override the lists, where any pro gay sites added to the schools white list? Where they added after the complaint? My guess is no).
So there ya go.
More...
First, we start with a simple fact: Internet filters no longer use word or picture algorithm filtering, or in lamens terms, filters do not automatically filter a site based upon the images or words within the site. Why? Because we tried it, and it failed, hard. If you filter breast, you stop breast cancer sites. If you filter cock, you filter farming and Chinese astrology sites. The filters would rarely stop a porn site, and many many porn sites actively work to bypass those filters. They were really only successful in filtering legitimate content, which is why they've been abandoned.
How do filters work then? They really on a series of lists, that very literally try and catalogue and classify every site on the Internet. How does this make for negligence on the part of the school? Because it is impossible for a single human being to construct and maintain lists like that, it takes a team of Internet researchers to do so. And the problem sites, the ones the lists are constantly updated to deal with? Porn sites and malicious sites. The law dictates they block porn, and they specifically picked a filter that could not possibly block porn, and that's the negligence. But it gets worse, by not having filtering software that can block malicious sites (sites with Virii or social engineering sites) they have opened the schools network to attack, and likely have incurred high costs as a result (each viral infection would require it staff to resolve, and that takes money) plus, students and staff have no protection against malicious sites, so the possibility of ID theft is high.
Bigotry is even easier to see though. Like in the case of one court case being blocked but not another. That is very intentional blocking of content based on idealogical content. And you can simply look at the lists to figure it out. Normal filters will say: all .gov addresses are allowed, they might be more specific and allow all IPs owned by the gov to be allowed as well. But we know that this filter actively looks into sections of the supreme courts .gov domain, to implicitly deny the Lawrence v Texas case. They cannot argue accidental filtering based on words, since whatever words contained in Lawrence, would be the same as those in Bowers (homosexuality, sodomy, blah blah) AND the lists rarely ever single out subsections of domains, especially not .gov domains, and especially not very specific content. (a rough equivalent would be an apartment allowing pets, but not golden retrievers, everything but golden retrievers.)
Sure, they can attempt to argue they didn't know, but that would be a lie. They got a complaint, surely they looked into the lists and noticed the oddness? If not, then negligence and still bigotry (for not investigating if pro gay sites were blocked). And seriously, they HAD to have noticed that a section of a .gov address was listed in a list entitled: sexually explicit.
And for the people who have asked, yes, most filtering software keeps logs about anyone trying to get to a blocked site, most actually keep logs of EVERYTHING that people accessed, blocked or not. But, these things can be turned off, so that they do not log at all. And considering the fly by night place they got the software from... It might be designed to not log at all.
But none the less, there are the lists, just examine those. They can also see how the school dealt with the lists (organizations can always override the lists, where any pro gay sites added to the schools white list? Where they added after the complaint? My guess is no).
So there ya go.
32
@31, read it again - they did find somebody to explain it for them who had the kind of credibility they wanted coupled with a manner of explaining it they thought a judge would listen to best. It sounds like they found no lack of experts happy to rattle off a pat explanation. They didn't want to settle for just that.
33
What colossal BS. I am in favor of free speech, even to the point of allowing students to access such false and toxic sites as those named here, but it's one or the other. Either protect students from false, lascivious and harmful information at school or allow them free access to information.
34
I went to Camdenton schools through the end of 6th grade. If it is anything like I remember, those kids need all the help they can get. It's one of those small, gossipy towns that hides its prejudice and pressure to conform under a thin veneer of perceived elitism. Trust me, this was not due to an oversight on the part of the administration that this is occurring.
I was tormented for, among other things, being perceived to be gay while there- to the point of being suicidal. The teachers all ignored it, or worse- a few joined in. My mother moved our entire family 30 miles away to the nearest populated school zone just to get me out of there. There is an up side though: my experiences in Camdenton are part of what led me to want to fight for GLBT rights as hard as I possibly could.
I was tormented for, among other things, being perceived to be gay while there- to the point of being suicidal. The teachers all ignored it, or worse- a few joined in. My mother moved our entire family 30 miles away to the nearest populated school zone just to get me out of there. There is an up side though: my experiences in Camdenton are part of what led me to want to fight for GLBT rights as hard as I possibly could.
38
I went to this high school, I graduated from this high school and this absolutely NOT surprising. When I was there, I heard every kind of slur (not just gay slurs) imaginable. That area of MO is incredibly bigoted, and any person with an ounce o sanity would steer clear of it.
39
@38 well, I thought the yearly springtime weather apocalypse was enough to do that lol. Fire, floods, and the occasional frog rain...
40
But if they started treating all students with equality and dignity we wouldn't get to see these shit stains getting smacked.
BTW have any heads rolled over that disgusting christo-fascist "anti-bullying" event?
BTW have any heads rolled over that disgusting christo-fascist "anti-bullying" event?
41
#6... I think you actually CAN make your software do just that. Allow any SCOTUS opinion in, in spite of the word sodomy. I'll be the Bible is still accessible and there is some baaaad words in there.
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