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Letters to the Editor
Please note: The views expressed in these readers' emails are not necessarily those of Net Family News or SafeKids.com; they're published here in support of an important ongoing, global discussion by and for all caregivers of online kids.
Religious Internet Filters, 3/12/02
(In response to our feature "Filtering's other flaw," 3/8/02)"I feel the need to get my oar in the puddle on this discussion of the "problem" of the conservative Christian internet filters.
"As a life long student of comparative religions and political thought I fear that there is a lot of sloppy thinking about this issue. The contention that it is somehow wrong to use a Christian based internet filter for a school overlooks that fact that the whole idea of protecting children from
pornography (sexuality) and violence/hate mongers is a uniquely Judeo/Christian religious principle."The Secular Humanist position of total neutrality to religion is in itself a religious position first postulated by the ancient Greeks whose chief
doctrine is that "Man is the measure of all things". The common distortion of the establishment clause of the constitution in fact establishes the
Secular Humanist theology as the official religious doctrine of the United States."This poses a real problem for those of us who try to establish safe internet usage for children because another Secular Humanist doctrine is that
Sexuality is the highest good that man can experience and that sexual activity from an early age is to be sought and encouraged by society. This
reasoning goes that to deny children access to any sexual knowledge or activity that they personally decide to pursue is in fact oppression of
their basic humanity and society should forbid parents by force of law from doing so. This idea would make internet filters by parents a felony."This may sound off the wall but this doctrine is being pushed by many international and national organizations ranging from The UN Commission on the Rights of the Child to NAMBLA. They all want to make it illegal for parents to restrain their children from being used by sexual predators from the pornography industry or worse.
"Secular Humanism isn't the only religion that advocates sexual activity for very young children, Hinduism sees sexual activity by very young girls as a very meritorious deed in some of the Hindu temple worship. Islam in it's treatment of women as property makes sexual activity the right of any slave owner or employer with their female or male servants or slaves. Nearly all of the non-Judeo/Christian pagan religions either turn a blind eye to pedophilia or actively encourage it.
"We must face the fact that in trying to keep children away from pornography and hate sites online we are putting ourselves squarely in the mainstream of traditional Judeo/Christian orthodox morality which is based on the Judeo/Christian view of the moral universe and doctrines of sin. There is no purely natural way of supporting an ethical or moral system which denies sexual activity to children. If you think pornography is wrong for children you are reflecting the Christian morality of the larger American culture.
"There is another practical consideration. Only the conservative Judeo/Christian organizations have the commitment and drive to develop and
maintain effective internet filtering engines against the assaults of the pornographers while trying to keep a balance openness to legitimate sites.
It takes religious zeal to keep up that battle. Some of the more secular filters like Cybersitter have been caught filtering out legitimate Religious
or Conservative Political websites because they we imposing their own content censorship on religious or political view that were not Politically
Correct."On the whole if you are going to filter you have to choose a religious or political worldview in order to have a coherent criteria of what to filter
out and what to allow. There are inherent biases built into all filtering schemes. If our purpose is to filter smut and hate from our kids while
allowing legitimate freedom of political, academic and religious speech then we should go with the traditional religious based internet filters. These are the ones which will lie the closest to what we want in filtering technology because it is the Judeo/Christian worldview that gave us those principles of morality and freedom in our US constitution and culture which we are trying to enforce.Dave W.
Massachusetts
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