Beware the cyber censors: Internet filters help ensure some gay and lesbian youths stay in the dark about their sexual orientation. (Internet).

For many parents and educators, the Internet is a lot like an unpredictable and streetsmart friend. Adults want to trust it, but they are uncertain how to protect their children from the new and foreign ideas it can provide access to.

As a direct result of this concern, many parents have put Internet filtering devices--which limit how much of the Net a user can access--on their home computers. The filters also have been employed by many schools and libraries, as required by the Children's Internet Protection Act of 2000 for institutions that receive certain types of federal funding.

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

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

These filters block 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 often among those categories.

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

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

All jokes aside, Heins says the issue goes to the heart of American freedoms and is blatant censorship. The more serious instances involved users being blocked 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 on HIV/AIDS.

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

But 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 by parents and completely controlled by parents. The choices are theirs alone," he says. In addition, he says, any blocks on gay and lesbian topics are not by default but must be activated by the software users.

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

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

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