Queer Perspectives on Social Responsibility in Canadian Schools and Libraries: Analysis and Resources
Alvin M. Schrader & Kristopher Wells
University of Alberta
Email: alvin.schrader@ualberta.ca, kris.wells@ualberta.ca
Part 1 - Part 2 - References
Issue Contents
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Dyke. Fag. Faggot. Queer. Fairy. Sissy. Fruit. Lesbo. That's so gay.
These and similar slurs have become fixtures of "cool" in teenspeak all across Canada and the United States . From utterances too shameful to say aloud, in little more than a decade these words have emerged as throwaway schoolyard idiom.
Are they "just words" and harmless banter as some students and teachers might suggest? Or should they be more accurately understood as hurtful name-calling and bullying that act as preludes to sanction homophobic harassment, abuse, and violence? Or perhaps they serve teens as clever deconstructions and challenges to homophobia and heterosexism through satirical nuance. Or yet again, perhaps they are instances of symbolic violence that perpetuates negative stereotypes through desensitized repetition, thus maintaining the marginalized leper status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans-identified, and queer[i] (LGBTQ) youth in Canadian society.
Whatever the surface meanings, however playful and benign some speakers might regard such language, the deeper truth reveals that regardless of context these words are invoked to signal difference. These words label, situate, categorize, define, delimit, and reinforce the positioning of sexual minorities as "other". These words also insult, demean, and harm. Indeed, a report on LGBTQ youth, conducted by the McCreary Centre Society of British Columbia, indicated that 80% of youth surveyed reported hearing their peers regularly making homophobic remarks at school (1999, 20). Surprisingly, these verbal assaults were not limited to students, with 28% of LGBTQ youth reporting that they also hear their teachers making homophobic comments (20).
For a particular subset of young people, as well as for their families and friends, these labelings are not at all metaphoric, and certainly not benign. Each utterance reaffirms their social standing outside the mainstream, beyond heteronormative experience and understanding, and undermines effective functioning, ambitious learning, and social well being at school and in the community.
Contemporary research and personal testimonies paint a disturbing picture of denial and indifference among those entrusted with the emotional health and physical safety of young people (Grace and Wells 2001; Wells 2004). Other quantitative Canadian-based studies place hard statistics behind these anecdotal stories. For example, the adolescent health survey mentioned above revealed that lesbian and gay youth, when compared to their heterosexual peers, face a significantly higher risk of emotional distress, physical abuse, and verbal harassment (McCreary Centre Society, 1999).
These forms of assault can often result in LGBTQ youth internalizing this violence, which often leads to destructive behaviours such as substance abuse, homelessness, and suicide (5). Significantly, almost 50% of the youth surveyed reported suicide attempts and over 50% also indicated a history of sexual and/or physical abuse (5-6). This abuse was not limited to the family, with 17% of LGBTQ youth stating that they have been physically assaulted at school within the past year (22). When asked specifically about their school environment, many LGBTQ youth stated that they often felt like outsiders in their schools, with 37% suggesting that they hated or disliked school (20).
LGBTQ youth are very clear that their schools have failed to provide them with safe and nurturing learning environments. When asked where they found sources of support, youth reported that they primarily turn to close friends and female family members (5). This lack of institutional support is further emphasized when only 39% of youth surveyed stated that they felt comfortable enough to tell a teacher or school counselor that they were lesbian or gay (6).
Canadian society can no longer ignore the pressing health needs and safety concerns of LGBTQ youth and still cling to the expectation that such youth will grow up unaffected, invisible, and passive in the face of discrimination, abuse, and violence. For many youth, invisibility and silence are not an option that they are willing to endure. These youth want to live proud, open, visible, and confident lives based upon who they are, rather than what their schools and communities tell them they should be.
The home page of the website for No Name-Calling Week states that,
Words hurt. More than that, they have the power to make students feel unsafe to the point where they are no longer able to perform in school or conduct normal lives (No Name-Calling Week 2005).
No Name-Calling Week is a nationwide project in the United States inspired by James Howe's young adult novel The Misfits to stop name-calling of all kinds in middle schools and to eliminate bullying in local communities. In Canada , the first Wednesday of June has been designated as the National Day Against Homophobia. On June 6, 2007 this National Day Against Homophobia will target the field of education. In a description of their forthcoming focus on education the bilingual website states:
All participants in the education field have a role to play in combating homophobia. By applying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, they have the legal obligation to intervene and to counteract discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, as well as for other forms of discrimination (Fondation Emergence 2005).
The National Day Against Homophobia has been endorsed by many provincial and national organizations, which include the Quebec National Assembly, the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, the Vancouver School Board, the Canadian Psychological Association, Parents Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) Canada , Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere (EGALE) Canada , and the Canadian Rainbow Health Coalition.
A recognized National Day Against Homophobia in schools is clearly needed. Study after study demonstrates that gay and questioning youth are two to three times more likely than their heterosexual peers to attempt suicide, drop out of school, abuse alcohol and other drugs, engage in prostitution, run away from home, or be rejected by parents and forced out of the family home (Ryan and Futterman 1998; Schneider 1997). A 1995 report revealed that “ Canada has one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world . . . of all teens who commit suicide, about one third appear to be homosexual in orientation" (Kroll and Warneke 1995).
Feeding on larger cultural values in the United States and Canada , the culture of fear created within public schools does not stop with graduation and the receipt of a high school diploma. Lifelong patterns of prejudice emerge seamlessly to ensnare post-secondary students in every discipline and profession; medical students, for example, are particularly vulnerable (Habib 2000, C12), as are teachers (Dowler-Coltman 1995; Grace and Wells 2004) and school counselors (Tsutsumi 2004).
In the United States , this culture of fear is enabled at national and state levels: 75% of America ’s students still do not have legal protections in place against homophobia and discrimination (Jennings 2004). Over and over, national surveys of American schools show that name-calling and bullying are experienced widely by students at all grade levels including lower elementary. Moreover, young people regard verbal taunts as a bigger problem than drugs, alcohol, racism, HIV/AIDS, or pressure to have sex, and they consider taunting to have as much negative impact as acts of physical bullying (Kosciw, Diaz, Colic, and Goldin 2005, 3).
Given the pressing health and safety needs of LGBTQ youth, school officials have been found to be legally and financially liable when they ignore anti-gay abuse. In 1996 in the first U.S. federal case challenging anti-gay violence in public schools, Jamie Nabozny of Ashland , Wisconsin was awarded nearly $1 million ("Taking Schools to Task" 2000, 16). In 2004 a California school district settled a harassment suit for $1.1 million brought by six lesbian and gay students; although not an admission of wrongdoing, school officials agreed to annual training of all employees, from administrators to custodians, to prevent harassment and discrimination based on sexual orientation, and to training for all seventh and ninth grade students ("Calif. District" 2004; Pogash 2005). Other lawsuits will inevitably follow unless school officials begin to take preventative action by adopting proactive training measures and LGBTQ inclusive anti-discrimination policies.
Notably, Canadian educators have not been immune to prosecution. Human rights complaints against schools that have failed to protect LGBTQ students from abuse and discrimination have been filed in several provinces across Canada . In an important 1996 case, Azmi Jubran filed a human rights complaint against a North Vancouver School Board of Trustees, alleging discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the Board's failure to protect him during his school years (School District No. 44 (North Vancouver) v. Jubran, 2005 BCCA 201). For more than five years, from grade eight to high school graduation, the student experienced repeated harassment, homophobic name calling, threats of being dipped in acid, and overt physical assault by other students that included being spit upon, kicked, punched, having his shirt lit on fire, his tent urinated on during a school field trip, and nails and grapes thrown at him. In its 2002 decision, the BC Human Rights Tribunal found that the board had ultimately failed in its duty to provide the student with his constitutionally protected right to participate in an educational environment free from discrimination and harassment, and also failed to address the underlying homophobia and heterosexism found in the school and among the actions of students. The Tribunal ordered the board to cease its contravention of the BC Human Rights Code and to take steps to refrain from and prevent a similar act from reoccurring.
Like classroom teachers and school administrators, school and public librarians have urgent and crucial roles to play in confronting homophobia and heterosexism in schools and communities. Unfortunately, as with the general response of their educational colleagues and community and national leaders, the call for more substantive advocacy by school and public librarians to eliminate homophobia and heterosexism has fallen largely on deaf ears.
This paper is constructed in two parts. The first is a legislative, policy, and ethical framework for social justice advocacy that can be utilized by teacher and public librarians to improve the social climate and everyday experiences of LGBTQ youth. The second section identifies key educational resources for administrators, counselors, teachers, school and public librarians, parents, and students to help them develop a critical literacy knowledge base of LGBTQ issues as key components of intellectual freedom and social responsibility.
Part I – Ethical and Legislative Framework for Social Justice Advocacy in Schools and Libraries
In Canada , the social and cultural climate towards LGBTQ persons is changing rapidly and, some would argue, more favourably than in the United States . Canada ’s climate of social responsibility and inclusiveness has its roots in a rich tradition of multiculturalism and a history of incremental legal precedents that support LGBTQ inclusion. Specifically, these landmark judgments have included the decriminalization of homosexual sex acts in 1969, the adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, and the adoption of human rights legislation at federal and provincial levels over the past several decades, with the notable "reading in" of sexual orientation into Alberta’s human rights statute by the Supreme Court of Canada in 1998 (Vriend v. Alberta, [1998] 1 S.C.R. 493). Each of these decisions represents influential judicial waypoints on the path to social inclusion and full citizenship. Indeed, as Bev Lepischak (2004, 87) notes, the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled on more than two dozen Charter-based equality challenges involving sexual orientation over the last fifteen years, almost all favourably.
Moreover, on Charter grounds, same-sex marriage has been permitted since June 2003 through court litigation, and is now available in most provinces, representing more than 80% of Canada 's population. Courts have also ruled that trans people are protected under the Canadian Human Rights Act although the only Canadian jurisdiction at the time of writing that provides explicit protection in its human rights legislation is the Northwest Territories (Marchildon 2004, 3).
Through two recent cases the Supreme Court of Canada has pushed back discriminatory practices in both schools (Chamberlain v. Surrey School District No. 36, [2002] 4 S.C.R. 710) and the federal customs agency (Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium v. Canada (Minister of Justice), ([2000] 2 S.C.R. 1120[ii]). Importantly, in the Chamberlain case the Supreme Court sent a clear message to educators, parents, and communities when it stated,
Learning about tolerance is therefore learning that other people's entitlement to respect from us does not depend on whether their views accord with our own. Children cannot learn this unless they are exposed to views that differ from those they are taught at home…. Tolerance is always age appropriate (at para. 66, 69).
Following the lead of the courts, many Canadian provincial teachers’ associations and federations have undertaken important initiatives to advocate for quality, human rights, and respect for LGBTQ students and teachers. Notably, the Alberta Teachers' Association (ATA) (A Vision and Agenda for Public Education, 2000; Teaching in Alberta, 2001) and the British Columbia Teachers' Federation (Members’ Guide To The BCTF, 2003-2004) both include explicit provisions prohibiting discrimination based on the grounds of sexual orientation against teachers and students. In 2003, the ATA became the first teachers’ association or federation in Canada to include gender identity as a prohibited ground of discrimination in a code of professional/ethical conduct (Grace and Wells 2004).
Clearly, these examples are representative of the broad legislative and ethical framework within which all educational personnel including teacher librarians are required professionally to act. For public librarians, the framework is less explicit, mandated under different provincial legislation, and comprised within a less regulated professional environment. Nevertheless, the larger constitutional framework of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and human rights legislation applies to the professional conduct of all public librarians.
There is also an international context that stipulates that the provision of school and public library services must occur without discrimination. This nondiscriminatory framework is clearly articulated by Laurel (Anne) Clyde in a paper presented to the 2003 world library and information congress held by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in Berlin .
This international framework includes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the IFLA/UNESCO School Library Manifesto[iii] (2000), and the IFLA/UNESCO School Library Guidelines (2002). IFLA has also adopted several other policies of interest. These include the 1999 Statement on Libraries and Intellectual Freedom, the 2002 Glasgow Declaration on Libraries, Information Services and Intellectual Freedom, which explicitly prohibits discrimination on the basis of "sexual preference", and the 2002 IFLA Internet Manifesto, which also explicitly mentions sexual orientation. In addition, the 1994 IFLA/UNESCO Public Library Manifesto was prepared in cooperation with IFLA. Even when sexual orientation is not specifically identified, all of these international documents enjoin librarians to provide inclusive services to "all people", and to avoid discriminatory censorship practices. International and national association documents on codes of ethics echo these principles of inclusivity and respect.
This is similarly true of the Canadian Library Association's 1985 Statement on Intellectual Freedom and the American Library Association's 1996 Library Bill of Rights. Moreover, the latter also adopted a position statement in 1993 on Access to Library Resources and Services Regardless of Sex, Gender Identity, or Sexual Orientation, which clearly states the responsibilities of librarians to strive for inclusiveness in services and resources (American Library Association 1993). As well, the American Library Association is home to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table (GLBTRT), founded in 1970 as the Task Force on Gay Liberation and considered the first gay, lesbian and bisexual professional organization. Its activities include annual book awards, programs at the annual conferences of the American Library Association, a quarterly newsletter, a clearinghouse of resources, and a website of policies and information of special interest to lesbians and gay men including: service to library users policies; library collections, programs and facilities policies; library employees policies; American Library Association activities; collection development policies; evaluating the treatment of gay themes in books for children and younger adults; classification schemes for lesbian/gay materials; hate crimes pathfinder to selected resources; bibliography for gay teens; bibliography of GLBT resources for children; gay holocaust resources; resources on religion and spirituality 1950-2005 for gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals; same-sex marriage resources; and more (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Round Table 2005).
Taking note of the broad context of international and national principles, Canadian school and public librarians should revisit their collections and assess the services being provided for and about their various LGBTQ communities. In particular, relevant resources for young people are significantly under-represented in school and public library collections. These critical absences are often more acute in conservative and rural communities. Reference services, access and search terminologies, and library collection holdings all serve as sources of systemic concern in both rural and urban school and public libraries. When these concerns are coupled with the gradual disappearance of qualified teacher librarians from schools it becomes increasingly difficult to develop inclusive resources and to effect positive change (Canadian Coalition for School Libraries 2004; Canadian Library Association 2000; Haycock 2003; "National Coalition" 2002).
Among the most troubling concerns is the quality of school and public library reference services provided to LGBTQ students. A recent study by Ann Curry (2006 forthcoming) is particularly illuminating. In her leading edge research, Curry staged an unobtrusive reference encounter using a "mystery shopper" style of evaluating reference service. A female proxy appearing to be a teenager visited twenty public libraries throughout the greater Vancouver area. At each library she explicitly asked for information about starting a gay-straight student alliance, and other similar groups, relevant school and community issues, and a good novel for the group’s discussions.
Although Curry found that "definite censure" was communicated by public librarians to the proxy customer in only three out of the twenty interactions, she also noted considerable room for improvement in most other areas. The study identified these areas as (1) library and information studies curricula, (2) professional self-assessment by practicing librarians of attitudes towards LGBTQ youth, (3) awareness of LGBTQ youth concerns and their information needs, and (4) familiarity with local resource centres and other information sources for referral.
These considerations echo the findings of groundbreaking survey research a decade earlier by James Carmichael and Marilyn Shontz, which found no consistency in approach to the treatment of social issues generally and sexual minority concerns specifically in the Master's curricula in either Canada or the United States, with nearly half of survey respondents receiving no information about lesbigay issues in their library education programs (Carmichael and Shontz 1996, 25, 48). They concluded that formal education and professional values were not ideologically cohesive on women's issues, lesbigays, or the relationship between social responsibilities and professionalism (21). In particular, general issues of lesbigay status and questions about lesbigay materials in the library were by far the most volatile of the issues covered by their survey (48), thus foreshadowing the findings of a great deal of subsequent empirical research on a variety of library service dimensions including reference quality addressed by Curry (2006 forthcoming).
One particularly troubling finding of Curry's study comes to our attention when the proxy student revealed that she would not return to twelve of the twenty public librarians in the Vancouver area (including of course the three who conveyed censure). The proxy reported experiencing negative physical reactions from the public librarians, such as raised eyebrows or frowns, she encountered abrupt or very hurried communication from them even when no one else was around waiting for service, and she received no positive closure thus making her feel that the librarians had "sent her away". Not surprisingly, these behaviours violate all standards and expectations of service and professionalism in the field of Canadian public library practice.
Given such attitudes, which ranged from cold indifference to outright antagonism, it should come as little surprise to learn that LGBTQ publications are significantly under-represented in both school and public library collections in Canada and the United States . Using a title checklist method of investigation, Paulette Rothbauer and Lynne (E.F.) McKechnie (1999) found "great variation" in the holdings of gay and lesbian fiction for young adults in medium and large Canadian public libraries. Only library systems in Halifax , Edmonton , and London held more than 75% of the checklist collection of relevant titles (34). The authors concluded that only a minimal number of institutions were doing a sufficient job of providing such materials, and that access to gay and lesbian fiction for young adults was "somewhat limited and certainly inconsistent even when one accounts for size of library" (36).
A similar checklist study conducted by Alex Spence (1999) undertook an examination of the gay young adult fiction owned by Canadian and American public libraries, with findings paralleling those of Rothbauer and McKechnie (1999) — a wide and inconsistent range of holdings across surveyed libraries in both the titles held and the copies made available per capita. In yet another checklist study, this one involving LGBTQ-related children's picture books, Spence (2000) once again found large differences in holdings among Canadian and American public libraries.
Researchers have put forth a number of factors to explain the influence of collection decisions and services. The presence and nature of reviews in mainstream reviewing media was repeatedly identified as one such critical factor. Rothbauer and McKechnie (2000) studied 158 reviews of 32 gay and lesbian fiction titles for young adults in five prominent journals. The researchers found that, while many of the selected titles were reviewed and most of them were commented on favourably, there was still considerable reviewer ambivalence noted. For example, "cautions and warnings" were often included in reviewer’s descriptions, in some cases the books were cast as "problem" novels, or they were simply described as a means to an important life lesson. Based on the study’s findings Rothbauer and McKechnie concluded,
A tension seems to exist between the desire to provide access to gay and lesbian fiction and to serve gay and lesbian teens and other young adults who might be interested in this topic, and the difficulties potentially associated with providing material that might be regarded as sensitive or inappropriate by others in the community (14).
Based on these findings the researchers state that clear, concise, and unbiased book reviews play a significant and determining role in responsible collection development by school and public librarians. Difficulties in identifying relevant publications were also identified as another source of noteworthy concern. For example, many LGBTQ titles are published by small presses with little marketing, limited distribution of new title catalogues (if they have them), and little or no access to the major mass market reviewing media that librarians typically use for acquisition decisions. Correspondingly, in a study of 35 young adult fiction titles with LGBTQ content published between 1998 and 2002, Michele Hilton Boon and Vivian Howard (2004, 135) found significantly fewer reviews than for a control group of young adult fiction.
Other important factors that should not be discounted entail a librarian’s fear of controversy, criticism, and censure. Several years ago the Calgary Board of Education faced considerable pressure by a group identifying itself as Parents Rights in Education to remove two titles they targeted for "pornographic" (read: homosexual) content. A spokesperson for the group said, "It's not just the pornography that's at issue, but the question has to be asked: If a book is violating the values of a parent … should that book be there?" (Griebel 1998, 6). Not surprisingly this same group called for a review of the Calgary Birth Control Association’s anti-homophobia educational program because they did not like "the idea of homosexuals going into schools” (Ketcham and Stewart 1998).
This is not an isolated case limited only to Canadian libraries. The Office for Intellectual Freedom in the American Library Association (ALA) reported that four of the ten most challenged books in 2004 were cited for homosexual themes, the highest number in a decade. These books included The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, What My Mother Doesn't Know by Sonya Sones, King & King by Linda de Haan and Stern Nijland, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou (American Library Association 2005a).
Indeed, ALA also reported that several LGBTQ-positive books were among the top 100 most frequently challenged titles throughout the 1990s, with Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings listed in second and third place, and Heather Has Two Mommies by Lesléa Newman ranked eleventh. All tallied, more than 500 of the almost 6,400 complaints reported to ALA were about homosexual themes or the perceived "promotion" of homosexuality (American Library Association 2005b). The chilling effect of these cumulative pressures to censor school and public library collections should not be underestimated or ignored.
Regardless of the quality of collections serving LGBTQ students in school and public libraries, appropriate subject access and index terminology are also important accessibility factors. Clyde and Lobban (2001, 27) noted that library catalogues often fail to assign a subject heading such as "Homosexuality—Fiction". When this omission occurs titles of interest to LGBTQ students remain invisible on the shelf – and in the closet. They also observed that almost nothing is known about school librarians' knowledge of such books or about how they make purchase decisions related to them, posing a number of important questions:
Although there seems to be a relationship between censorship and access to these books in libraries, how strong is this relationship, how does it work, and does it affect some places and people more than others? How are these books catalogued in school libraries and how does the cataloguing affect access to them? ( Clyde and Lobban 2001, 28)
Ellen Greenblatt (1990) in her influential study also examined library classification systems by documenting a century of evolutionary history revealing how homosexuality has been represented in the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) system, which is the most influential and commonly used subject headings system in the world. Her extensive examination revealed "a clear paradigm of bias and non-responsiveness to current usage" (77). She also noted the troubling and recurring trend that witnessed the absence of subject headings that were not created until years, and in some cases even decades, after given terms had entered into mainstream usage (95-96). She concluded that "prejudicial terminology" had compromised and restricted access to relevant resources (96). (See also Gough and Greenblatt 1992.) These observations echo those of Sanford Berman (1993), long-time advocate for improved subject access by the Library of Congress for publications about LGBTQ people, among other marginalized groups. More recently, Carmichael (2002) examined access to LGBTQ materials more generally under the subject heading "homosexuality", "gay men", and "gays", observing in part the intractable problem of identifying headings that would cover everything of interest on LGBTQ issues while also achieving specificity. Grant Campbell (2000) has also pointed out that assigning meaningful subject headings is a complicated task that negotiates between universalizing and constructivist viewpoints.
In a more contemporary study, Boon and Howard (2004) found that the subject heading access to 35 LGBTQ titles of interest to young people published between 1998 and 2002 was inconsistent and inadequate. The LGBTQ content of these publications was consistently identified in subject headings for only 14 of the 35 titles, and in many cases the LGBTQ content "was being disguised in subject headings such as prejudice, identity, interpersonal relations, friendship, female friendship, and best friends–fiction" (137). However, even when LGBTQ content was accurately identified, the subject terms were inconsistently applied, for example, sometimes "gay men" was used, sometimes "bisexuality", and sometimes "homosexuality" (137-138).
Nonetheless, Rothbauer (2004) found in a qualitative study of the role of voluntary reading in the lives of self-identified lesbian or queer young women that none of them used the term "homosexuality" in their search queries, suggesting (as argued by Campbell 2000) that a "deeper, more contextually relevant subject classification" is required for effective access through library catalogues to relevant materials (99).
In addition to library catalogues and classification systems, another increasingly important source of information for students is the Internet. By 2001 almost 60% of all surveyed school-aged children aged 5 to 17 in the United States had used the Internet. Among teens aged 15-17 the reported usage was 95%. Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, three-quarters of older teens had sought health information online particularly on topics related to sexual health issues (Rideout 2001, 3, 14).
Internet access is even more important to LGBTQ, questioning, and rural youth, who often need to maintain anonymity in seeking out sources of information and support to help them come to terms with a wide array of sexual feelings, questions, and concerns. Young people are "coming out" at much earlier ages than previous decades. The average coming out age for gay men and lesbians has dropped to age 15 or 16 (Ryan and Futterman 1998). Some observers suggest this is due in large part to the immediate availability of unprecedented amounts of supportive LGBTQ content on the Internet.
Given the significant impact that the Internet plays in the lives of LGBTQ and questioning youth, it is astonishing to learn that by 2002, 73% of American schools had employed some sort of Internet filtering software (Rideout, Richardson, and Resnick 2002, 3). It is assumed that similar levels of censorship are evident in Canadian schools. Moreover, a 2004 survey revealed that 54% of American families with teenagers reported using filters to limit online access, which was up 13 percentage points from a similar study conducted four years earlier (Lenhart 2005, i). Current filter usage in Canadian homes is unknown. However, a 2000 study commissioned by the Media Awareness Network found that only 17% of Canadian homes reported using Internet filtering technologies[iv] (Media Awareness Network 2000, 4).
Many research studies have demonstrated that Internet filters frequently, incorrectly, and, at best, with limited accuracy block millions of completely legitimate websites on an almost inconceivable array of topics. These serious filtering weaknesses are explained in part by the limitations of the technology itself. The personal biases of designers and the nature of language and culture are also other major factors contributing to the egregious levels of error found in study after study of Internet filtering effectiveness (Schrader 2000, 2002).
Given these levels of inconsistency and error, what do filters have to do with a young person's ability to access relevant LGBTQ content on the Web? The short answer is… everything! LGBTQ content is singled out for censorship by many of the most prominent filters used in school and public libraries. Many of these filters contain a pervasive anti-gay bias in filtering results. This censorship is not simply attributable to the blocking of sexually explicit sites. In fact, almost all filters go far beyond offensive sexuality in the topics that they censor. For example, many LGBTQ and related sexual health sites are commonly blocked by a wide variety of software filtering products. Of note, a 2002 Kaiser Family Foundation study tested access to health information sites for teens by surveying seven commonly used filters (CyberPatrol, Symantec, BESS, 8e6, SmartFilter, Websense, and AOL Parental Controls). The study found that even at the least restrictive level, the filters incorrectly blocked 10% of sites that conveyed information related to safer sex, condoms, and health issues pertaining to lesbians and gays.
At the most restrictive settings, the filters were found to have a major impact on access to general health information with 25% of general health sites blocked. For topics on sexual health, such as safer sex, the blocking rates were as high as 50% (Rideout, Richardson, and Resnick 2002, 12). When lesbian and gay health information sites were examined for accessibility, 60% of the sites were censored (Rideout, Richardson, and Resnick 2002, Chart 3). These included sites such as a female condom site (www.femalehealth.com), the well-known Columbia University sexual health information site (www.goaskalice.columbia.edu/), an HIV site (www.hivchannel.com/prevention/safesex/), Planned Parenthood's teen site (www.teenwire.com), and information in Spanish on herpes found on the Boston Children's Hospital site (www.youngwomenshealth.org/spherpes) (Rideout, Richardson, and Resnick 2002).
Filtering options on free and commonly available search engines are also a source of concern. For example, Google's SafeSearch filter, which claims to block sites based on the one criterion only of "explicit sexual content", in fact systematically targets LGBTQ Internet content (Rideout, Richardson, and Resnick 2002, 21; Edelman 2003). In similar research Edelman concluded that website exclusions by SafeSearch appeared to be arbitrary and went well beyond Google's stated sole criterion of "explicit sexual content". He also noted that "this apparent arbitrariness extended to a large number of search terms including searches about sexual health and gay rights".
These efforts to keep LGBTQ content off the Web should not be surprising. Many filters block based on LGBTQ keywords and others have a subject category that targets sexual minority sites and information. For example, one of CyberSitter's filtering categories is "sites promoting gay and lesbian activities and lifestyle.” In response to criticism about blocking homosexual sites, a representative of the company provided this stereotypical response, "We filter anything that has to do with sex. Sexual orientation is about sex by virtue of the fact that it has sex in the name". Other filtering categories, as identified by their product owners, are designed to target LGBTQ content by utilizing these phrases:
