Count Roland follows up on an observation he had previously made concerning the fact that Time Immortal is blocked at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster, Alberta. Apparently, I’m classified as an “advocacy organization” by the IT personnel there.
But it appears that the rabbit hole goes even deeper than that. Roland has done quite a lot of investigative work, and his conclusions are…surprising, on one hand, and yet unsurprising as well.
O Writer,
I did a more extensive perusal of a small sample of organizations that have websites.
You are still blocked as an advocay organization; FreeMarkSteyn is blocked as a message/discussion board.
I was allowed to go to Planned Parenthood, CHRC, COLF, CCCB, CCRL, and Lifesite.
Given the Catholic position on abortion, I was surprised that PP was allowed, but as a defender of free speech it must be allowed - dynamic tension that is better than simple dichotomies, no? 
CHRC and CCRL are opposing legal organizations. Lifesite was to test if the Catholic organizations were only allowed because the developers were told to allow Catholic sites — it was allowed as a non-Catholic life issues site, which is good.
But I am stil surprised that they, in general, were allowed considering they are as advocative as you are, if not more.
Right away, I confess myself surprised by the level and scope of the site categorization that is in play here, not all of it accurate. Lifesite is more or less correctly categorized: it is a life issues site, though not one that takes a specifically Catholic perspective.
On the other hand, Time Immortal is very incorrectly categorized: I am just one guy, not an organization, and though I do have a couple of guest bloggers (e.g. my wife) there is no explicit advocacy done through the site, certainly not in the sense of “one cause/raison d’etre” that my being categoriezed as an advocacy organization would imply. Contrast this with the allowance of Planned Parenthood’s website, despite the fact that PP openly admits that (pro-abortion) advocacy is part of its mission.
(Note that I’m not suggesting that the Planned Parenthood website should be banned — unless the ban on advocacy groups is to remain in place: consistency is important!)
And then there’s the issue of Binks’ FreeMarkSteyn aggregator, which is not really a discussion board (not more than any other blog that allows comments is, at any rate), nor a message board (according to the normative definition of the term). It is more properly termed an aggregator; that is: a collection or compliation of links to various stories from around the internet, which may or may not revolve around a common theme.
But this is also not as deep as the rabbit hole goes, O Reader. Roland notes, in a follow-up message, that a rather peculiar, though perhaps predictable, trend has begun to emerge.
Here is a list of more sites I tried.
Blocked:
Real Women of Canada - advocacy
National Rifle Association - weapons
Stormfront - hate
Black Panther - advocacy
Allowed:
PETA
National Organization of Women
Jack Chick
Coalition for Gun Control
Canadian Islamic Congress
Jihad Watch
SteynOnline
Reverend Wright on wiki -> tucc.org
Christianity Today
From my observations so far, the blocked sites all seem to be from the “conservative” side of the spectrum. Many allowed sites, from PP to now to PETA to Gun control, are largely advocacy groups but are on the “progressives’” approved list, although it also has a fair number of ‘conservative’ sites. How, though, realwomen/nra is blocked while now/gun control is not is beyond me.
Also, how is Jack Chick or TUCC not a hate site, or at least problematic on advocacy grounds for black liberation / anti-Catholic Theology?
I am somewhat confused (although I guess the web-block company likely has a liberal bias) and dismayed. I would hope that any censorship be in favour of groups closer to Church teaching and that Censorship be minimized, or if more widespread, to be at least not in favour of non-Church teaching sites.
This is a confusing trend, to be sure. For all intents and purposes, the person or persons responsible for policing the Internet access at the Catholic high school in Lloydminster — Holy Rosary High School — seems to be operating under something of a liberal bias in terms of how he or she applies the school’s presumably extant web access policy.
To wit: if advocacy groups are banned, why can the websites of organizations like PETA, Planned Parenthood, NOW, and the CIC still be accessed? If weapons-related sites are banned, why can the websites of gun control groups still be accessed? Roland points out other dichotomies which would appear to exist as well.
The extent of the bias is not great, but in general this situation doesn’t pass the old “sniff test” — there does seem to be some effort that has gone in to reducing access to conservative opinion on the Internet at Holy Rosary. And since censorship in any form is unacceptable…
Holy Rosary High School
Principals
Principal: Mr. T. Brochu
Vice Principal: Mr. Vince Orieux
Vice Principal: Mr. C. Musyj
Contact Information
Address: 6611A-39 Street
Lloydminster, AB T9V 2Z4
Phone: (780) 875-3600
Fax: (780) 875-9516
Email: hrhs@lcsd.ca
Do drop them a line, O Reader. There’s quite enough censorship — especially censorship of conservative opinion — going on in this country of late as it is, without some tin-pot IT dictator adding to the list of problems. That this sort of thing is happening at a Catholic hich school, especially one which states that its mission is to “nurture spiritual, academic, emotional, social and physical growth in every individual.”
Update: Welcome, readers from Sleepy Old Bear, Walker, and BCF! And welcome, Steynians!
