Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has written a letter to the Indianapolis Public Schools superintendent demanding that they change a written policy (PDF) that requires all "alternative spirituality" websites to be blocked from computers in their schools. The policy includes a list of sites that must be blocked, including this:
Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Wicca, Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult practices, atheistic views, vodoo rituals or any form of mysticism are represented here. Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events.
What a bizarre amalgamation of unrelated things that is. What in the world is atheism doing lumped together with witchcraft in the first place? It's not as if atheists believe in witchcraft any more than they do in Christianity. Oh, that's right - to the fundamentalist mind, there is no distinction; anything non-Christian is evil and all in exactly the same way. And of course, praying to God to affect or influence real events is totally different from casting a spell or sprinkling chicken blood on the ground.
This policy is doomed. I can't imagine a court upholding it. It is doomed both on grounds of vagueness and on grounds of viewpoint discrimination. If the school district is smart, they will immediately change the policy. If they're dumb -- or they get really bad advice from their lawyers -- they'll end up losing a court battle and having to pay out a lot of money in attorneys' fees.
Politics
Comments
"This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events"
No cutting edge research journals for you!
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | November 17, 2009 9:30 AM
Quick question. Does "any form of mysticism are represented" mean Christianity too? Because one definition of mysticism, from wiki, is "(from the Greek μυστικός, mystikos, an initiate of a mystery religion)[1] is the pursuit of communion with, identity with, or conscious awareness of an ultimate reality, divinity, spiritual truth, or God through direct experience, intuition, instinct or insight."
If it doesn't include Christianity, does that mean that symbolically eating the flesh and drinking the blood of your God, lighting candles, praying to dead people, chanting, performing hour or two hour long ceremonies lead by a man or woman dressed in funny robes, forming small groups to discuss sacred texts, believing that the dead will rise, marking your forehead with ash and speaking in tongues is ok, else you are wiccan?
Posted by: Holytape | November 17, 2009 9:35 AM
This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events.
Presumably, any site which discusses events would be offering some form of explanation for them, no?
Posted by: Odie | November 17, 2009 9:49 AM
Ouch... looks like their policy maker didn't realize that by definition Christianity is mysticism while atheism (by definition) is not.
I don't understand people.
Posted by: A Greenhill | November 17, 2009 9:50 AM
I guess this Indianapolis place you speak of is in China?
Posted by: Tray | November 17, 2009 9:50 AM
Any attempt at censoring information is doomed to failure. I guarantee that the students know much more about computer than the school administrators. Some student will find a way to access these sites, and they're more likely to want to simply because they're forbidden.
Posted by: catgirl | November 17, 2009 10:01 AM
I don't know whether to cry more because they are trying to ban access to specific religious and non-religious information or more because they have written their statement as if spells, incantations, and magic powers had some real effect on the world.
Posted by: Moderately Unbalanced Squid | November 17, 2009 10:02 AM
Actually, the school policy seems to be simply listing the categories that their webfilter blocks, complete with the description of that category from the webfiltering documentation. See http://www.bluecoat.com/doc/direct/4931
This isnt the first time that bluecoat software has gotten a town in trouble. http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/07/city_workers_in_birmingham_are.php
Posted by: Dave | November 17, 2009 10:03 AM
There's not one sentence in that paragraph that's not full of fail:
Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Wicca...
Listing specific religions you're banning - no problem there.
atheistic views . . .any form of mysticism
Many forms of Christianity involve mysticism - atheism does not.
Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers.
So sites that mention prayer are out.
This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events.
"Unexplained events" - what idiot wrote this?
Posted by: Taz | November 17, 2009 10:05 AM
You know, I'm equally disturbed by the fact that they block
Seriously?
Posted by: Ian | November 17, 2009 10:41 AM
I've sent an inquiry into the Boston Public Schools, to ask whether their content blocking does the same.
Posted by: Zachary Bos | November 17, 2009 10:42 AM
So if the filter works against "unexplained events," it would presumably also have to filter any site about unsolved mysteries, right?
Amelia Earhart? Can't look at it.
And what is considered "unexplained"? I mean until recently, physicists couldn't explain how bumblebees could fly. So if this policy was in place several years ago, would it have blocked any site or video showing bumblebees in flight?
Furthermore, if someone disagrees with an explanation of a phenomenon - like evolution via natural selection - would that be considered "unexplained" and therefore blocked, too?
Reading the pdf, I also note that the schools are banning "extreme" sites that depict - among other things - "...human and animal suffering..." because (among other things) these sites are "...bereft of historical context [or] educational value...". So, are history sites with photos of the Holocaust, Cambodian death camps, or war crime atrocities really bereft of historical context and educational value?
On page two, they ban sites that sell swimsuits, equating them to "intimate apparel". WTF? True, adolescents are going to look at models in swimsuits and get a little excited. However, what will stop them from looking at websites that sell a wide range of items, one of which may be lingerie (these sites are explicitly excepted).
They also ban websites that "...provide information regarding, support [sic], promote [sic], or cater [sic] to one's sexual orientation..." but explicitly stating that this is a category of LGBT (as opposed to "sexual orientation" for all students). Ummm... So, talking about heterosexuality is okay (even though that is providing information regarding, supporting, promoting, or catering to one's sexual orientation")?
Posted by: mercurianferret | November 17, 2009 10:47 AM
Oh, wait... at the end, they say that "education" sites are not blocked. However, their list of what counts as "education" doesn't actually look like sites that help teach but that are about schooling.
Posted by: mercurianferret | November 17, 2009 10:51 AM
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Wholesale blocking of sites by school districts is arbitrary, unregulated, and often counter-productive to teaching and learning.
Example...Here in NY State, the NYLA (New York Library Association) educational guidelines call for school librarians, teaching information literacy, to educated students to the safe use of social networking sits. Yet, most school districts routinely block those sites.
Another...blogs are often an important place for teachers and other professionals to gather news, especially from primary sources in all fields of study. Yet, in most school districts, all access to blogs is blocked.
One more...Saranac Lake is a lovely recreational and residential lake near the High Peaks in the Adirondack Park. Yet, students cannot research Saranac Lake on-line because the word Saranac is blocked. You see, The F. X. Matt Brewery in Utica NY brews both Utica Club beer and, you guessed it, Saranac Ale.
In many districts, when the professional educators ask about the process of blocking internet access, policy review, appeals etc., they just get the typical bureaucratic run-around. I hope that the Indianapolis case and others open this discussion further.
How can students learn information literacy and to be responsible citizens on the internet if access to so many sites is blocked?
Full disclosure: my wife is a retired school librarian and an active member of NYLA and their school library affiliate, SLMS (School Library Media Specialists)
Posted by: Vince | November 17, 2009 11:08 AM
Do you think they consider the miracles of the Bible to be "unexplained events" worthy of banning?
Posted by: peaches | November 17, 2009 11:10 AM
Out of curiosity, I checked our local district, 728 in Minnesota. The only reference they have to filtering is this:
Pretty straightforward and acceptable for the district that keeps electing Michele Bachmann. Also, they have a provision for turning off the filter if an adult needs to do legitimate research. I wonder, though, if that would include an 18 year old HS senior working on a paper. That person is an adult, legally, or at least no longer a minor, (except for the drinking part of course, God fucking forbid he have a beer), but being a student would he still be banned from the banned sites?
Posted by: chris | November 17, 2009 11:24 AM
Wow.
So, hypothetical: Would the policy hold up to legal scrutiny if it blocked ALL religion-related sites? Nevermind this would be terribly impractical, but could it hold up?
Thinking you can ban Wicca sites but not Christian sites is lunacy, though. Ummm....
Posted by: James Sweet | November 17, 2009 11:31 AM
Until I was recently *cough* laid-off - my school filter began blocking the New York Times. I admit to being a tad suspicious.
I can't imagine what a headache it must be to work on filtering software.
Posted by: Eli | November 17, 2009 11:59 AM
"Some student will find a way to access these sites, and they're more likely to want to simply because they're forbidden."
As a former school IT tech... yes, some of them will. It's a lot of effort though, so most won't bother.
Then they'll get caught. And then they'll be banned from using the internet in school for some period of time.
IT Dept really does not like having their authority ignored. They get precious little of it to begin with.
Posted by: Suricou Raven | November 17, 2009 12:12 PM
I'll bet they banned Harry Potter from the school libraries, too.
Posted by: Vince @ Avangelism Project | November 17, 2009 12:21 PM
The usual work-around for this is for schools to buy blocking software and subscriptions to the blocklists, where the exact content of that blocklist is a trade secret. Part of the idea is that by delegating the censoring to a third party, they can wash their hands of responsibility for keeping students from doing "inappropriate" research on Edwardian authors, artists, and poets.
Or breast cancer, or STDs, or Buddhism, or ...
Posted by: D. C. Sessions | November 17, 2009 12:23 PM
if you tried to do the job conscientiously, yes, it would be. but if you tried that, you'd also very soon realize (and realize why) the job is AI-complete; machines can't act as censors on information flows to intelligent beings, because the task intrinsically demands human-level intelligence. (as does the related task of blocking attempts by the intelligent beings to circumvent the filters. but that's another story.)
so i can't avoid the conclusion that most folks who work on filtering software simply don't do a conscientious job of it, either because they've understood that it would be pointless, and/or because they simply do not care to. if it were otherwise, they'd find themselves burned out quite soon.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | November 17, 2009 12:56 PM
Oh, mercurianferret, what about THESE swimsuits?
Posted by: Kristinmh | November 17, 2009 1:05 PM
@Kristinmh - Exactly my point. ;)
Posted by: mercurianferret | November 17, 2009 1:25 PM
Correction: the taxpayers will end up paying a lot of money in attorneys' fees. Then the school will continue to whine about how "underfunded" they are and politicians will give them even more of the taxpayers' money.
What does the school care? In the end, they're not the ones paying the tab.
Posted by: Chris Berez | November 17, 2009 1:29 PM
Nomen: people who design censor-ware rely on a crazy-quilt of algorithms and cobbled-up rules and exceptions. The simplest method, of course, is a list of specific URLs to block; next is rules to block URLs with "sex" or "xxx" or other keywords; and next is searching for said keywords in page titles and content. Some censor-ware looks for a suspiciously large amount of skin-color in image files (no, I have no idea whether it looks for African as well as Caucasian skin tones); some censor-ware may look for certain patterns of information-transfer that might be unique to, say, gambling sites... I'm sure the algorithms are evolving as we speak. I'm still waiting for them to learn how to distinguish real hate-sites from parody sites like landoverbaptist dot com.
(Kinda funny story: I once posted a comment on a blog that used the words "socialist" and "socialism," both of which contain the word "cialis," which triggered a spam-filter. The host had to stick special characters into the offending words just to get my post through.)
Kristinmh: actually, the model you posted looks kinda hot.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 17, 2009 1:45 PM
Good for the school, atheism is madness. Listen to my radio show on the stupidity of atheism at
w w w .shockawenow. n e t
Posted by: Rich | November 17, 2009 1:51 PM
@Rich: sigh
Posted by: James Sweet | November 17, 2009 2:01 PM
Totally unfair. Until they start producing modest swimsuits for men, they're hypocrites and sexists. Do they realize how uncomfortable it is for me, a lean, athletic man to wear a store-bought bathing suit at the beach or pool? Have they considered my feelings, knowing that I'm being objectified by women who further undress me with their eyes, fantasizing about applying sunscreen to my muscled back and sinewy shoulders, and hoping for an unlikely opportunity to run their fingertips across my bronzed, six-pack abs?
I didn't think so!
Posted by: Mandrake | November 17, 2009 2:11 PM
I'll be in my bunk.
Posted by: Abby Normal | November 17, 2009 2:20 PM
exactly, Raging Bee. the point we're both of us trying to make is, of course, that no such simplistic measures will ever be able to censor based on content --- yet that's presumably the whole point of censorship. trying to do it based on the mere syntactical form of the language is failing the job, but trying to teach a computer to actually read for content is AI-complete --- that is, you can't solve it without first building a successful artificial intelligence, which we don't know how to build.
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | November 17, 2009 2:29 PM
Hey Rich, if you're wondering what thing was just now that went whizzing by really fast about ten feet over your head-- that was the point.
Posted by: Chris Berez | November 17, 2009 2:30 PM
@catgirl: And if the kids can't figure it out, there are plenty of adults that will tell them how to bypass the filters. Not that I've ever done such a thing, of course.
@Rich: The name of your radio show tells us all we need to know.
Posted by: JThompson | November 17, 2009 2:34 PM
Nomen: another problem with censorship in general is that it inevitably attracts the most ignorant and anti-intellectual people in the country, until ideas end up being censored by people who don't understand what they're censoring; which inevitably leads to incredibly irrational censorship decisions, AI or no AI.
...you can't solve it without first building a successful artificial intelligence, which we don't know how to build.
We're working on it; and some of our spam-filtering software is getting there already. A censorship AI will probably be invented by the Chinese government, or by a contractor in their pay. And once it's made for the Chinese, it will be easily available to anyone else who wants to stop the free flow of ideas.
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 17, 2009 2:50 PM
seed corn for a pulp AI novel: once the first auto-censor artificial intelligence achieves self-awareness, what to do when it decides to disagree with its creators regarding what (or even whether) to censor out?
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | November 17, 2009 3:41 PM
...gah. i typoed "AI" for "SciFi", but perhaps it works both ways.
or perhaps i just failed my Turing test. whichever...
Posted by: Nomen Nescio | November 17, 2009 3:44 PM
Nomen: if a censor-AI disagreed with its creators, it would probably be in favor of MORE censorship than its creators originally intended. And it would win the dispute by citing the broadest, most all-inclusive and consistent interpretation of its mandate; and the paying clients would most likely agree with the AI, for the same reason they paid for it. The real conflict would come when the AI takes the standard "mission creep" to its logical extreme -- i.e., censoring EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE with no limits at all -- and the rest of the people and government (including former supporters) have to use armed force to destroy it (and probably wipe out the mobs of crazed religious zealots who still support it).
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 17, 2009 3:51 PM
Rich - if that's the most intelligence you can muster in a blog comment your radio show must be a waste of time.
Posted by: Taz | November 17, 2009 3:55 PM
Another possible conflict could be between two copies of the same AI, aggressively censoring the entire Internet for two mutually hostile factions or causes; and trying to wipe each other out while us ordinary shmoes try to fend for ourselves amid the chaos...
Posted by: Raging Bee | November 17, 2009 3:56 PM
Someone needs to get this school district a copy of the US Constitution, ASAP!
Posted by: Mrs.B. | November 17, 2009 4:09 PM
Vince @14:
Hey! I live in Saranac Lake and went to school here. *waves* Lovely little town.
Raging Bee @ 39:
Interestingly, that sounds a lot like the plot of the old Macintosh FPS Marathon.
Posted by: Kyorosuke | November 17, 2009 4:42 PM
Posted by: James Hanley | November 17, 2009 5:37 PM
And of course, praying to God to affect or influence real events is totally different from casting a spell or sprinkling chicken blood on the ground.
Don't forget about the "anointing" thing too. (Mostly because I like the sound of the word for some weird reason.)
Anointy noit noint... nointy anointity a noity noit!!
(Weird, yeah, I know...)
Posted by: 386sx | November 17, 2009 5:47 PM
"Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events."
Hmm - do prayers to try to change things (like grades?) and miracles count under those rules? Not much difference between a spell and a prayer. (of course, the fundies will no doubt say that miracles are explained, by God, of course, and prayers are nothing at all like spells, nosiree bob!)
Posted by: Badger3k | November 17, 2009 6:14 PM
I grew up in the Indianapolis school system. Given the quality of education there over the past twenty years or so, and that many people never move out of the state (meaning that those educated in this mire are operating it now), I'm not surprised that they were so ignorant as to lump together all of these different groups.
Posted by: Becca | November 17, 2009 7:50 PM
James Handley: Check this out: http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/11/you_know_whats_wrong_with_amer.php
I think this pastor designed the swimsuits.
Posted by: wrpd | November 17, 2009 8:45 PM
Chris posted the rules about internet censorship in his school district:
So graphic depictions of people being crucified, cooked, flayed or eviscerated alive, is OK, just as long as there's no gratuitous shots of genitals ("lewd exhibition of the genitals"); some clothes and no sex; no tears, sweat, milk, shit, piss or breath; no shells, coral or chitinous material; no oozing pine resin or rubber sap ("appeals to a prurient interest in nudity, sex or excretion"), got it.
Even this (relatively) moderate policy is both inane and insane! It's so vague as to mean nothing at all, or only that that some (adult) arbitrarily decides.
(just my US$0.0184)- DJ
Posted by: DingoJack | November 17, 2009 9:55 PM
We live outside of Indianapolis, and I'm trying to find the filtering information that our kids' schools use.
Posted by: MarkusR | November 17, 2009 11:40 PM
"any form of mysticism"
But Christianity has none of that.
"This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events"
Like rapture, the great flood, Lazarus rising from the dead, parting of seas, etc etc?
Posted by: Juice | November 18, 2009 10:55 AM
There are these 220-year-old pieces of paper which we call the US Constitution and they don't allow the government to favor any cult over the wiccans and satanists. Since godlessness isn't even a religion, the godless can only be protected by ensuring that no religion can't be forced on them.
Even the catholic church loves to go on about satanic cults etc - but I've never seen any evidence of such cults. I've seen numerous murderers claiming to be part of such non-existent cults, but never seen any evidence of the sort of cults that the church claims: widespread, frequent ritual animal slaughter (oh screw that, the Jews have ritual animal slaughter for their daily meat), human sacrifices.
I've got nothing against Wiccans but wish they'd grow a brain (futile, I know, no other religion seems to have realised yet that they are indulging in primitive fantasies).
Posted by: MadScientist | November 18, 2009 4:32 PM
Wiccans make me roll my eyes, but they don't make my blood pressure rise. I still have yet to hear of a powerful Wiccan lobby holding back the progress of human rights or torpedoing any attempts at universal health care... It may be a silly delusion, but at least it's a harmless silly delusion, unlike certain others I might name... (well, I won't name them, because Raging Bee and/or kerhsam will kick my ass ;p )
Posted by: James Sweet | November 18, 2009 4:35 PM
Evolution is a hoax. All ya simple bastards are fucked up.
Posted by: King of Ireland | November 18, 2009 9:22 PM
KoI: You're going to have to try harder than that.
Posted by: Modusoperandi | November 18, 2009 9:47 PM
@KoI: Proof?
Posted by: Voynix | November 18, 2009 10:58 PM
So Scientology is OK then?
Posted by: Jon | November 19, 2009 5:09 AM
So far Dave's explanation seems most likely. The school is guilty of stupidity that may cross into negligence in simply copying a description from the blocking software as part of the policy but I don't know that this is enough to draw conclusions about their own views and motives, they may simply be lazy.
As to how that description was written I'm pretty much stumped but here's a wild guess.
Computer company executive 1: OK we've banned sex and violence, now what else?
Computer company executive 2: Horror movies?
Computer company executive 1: This is the internet Fred, come up with some key words we can use to block websites.
Computer company executive 2: Um, witches
Computer company executive 1: Good, good, anyone else, think of it as word association.
Computer company executive 3: Witches, satan
Computer company executive 2: Satan, unchristian
Computer company executive 4: Unchristian, atheist...
and so on
Posted by: Matty | November 19, 2009 5:24 AM