NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)–It’s more evident than ever that not all Internet filtering mechanisms are made alike. Cyber Patrol, a popular Internet filtering software package, is now blocking the Internet site of the American Family Association (AFA) and other Christian and pro-family sites. According to CyberPatrol officials, the AFA is being targeted because it violates the software screener’s guidelines of “intolerance” in its opposition to the homosexual agenda.
Of even greater concern is the fact that personal computer-based filtering software such as Cyber Patrol can be manipulated and bypassed by the user to allow the free run of the Internet and its World Wide Web, noted Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission.
“There is a subterranean electronic river of pornographic slime running under every city, town, village and hamlet in America,” Land said. “The most grotesque, vile and degenerate material that has until now been only available in the worst parts of a city are now available to anyone who has access to the Internet.”
That is why the ERLC has endorsed Rated-G Online, a Christian Internet service provider that filters offensive and dangerous sites at the company, or server, level, Land said.
The Rated-G system resides at the server level, far from innovative in-home hackers, he said, explaining software filters reside on the user’s personal computer and can be manipulated or even removed.
Rated-G Online provides security and safety for families as they surf the ‘net, Land said. This most up-to-date technology searches the entire web daily for offensive and dangerous sites using a process more sophisticated than key-word exclusion and is overseen by a staff that personally reviews questionable sites. Instead of AOL or other Internet service providers, Rated-G Online becomes the users’ means to access the Internet.
Land recounted a recent report from a small-town Southern Baptist deacon who had inadvertently stumbled upon an Internet site promoting pedophilia. The deacon remained “visibly shaken” as he told his pastor of being unable to even exit the site as attempts to back out of the site were blocked. He said when he finally escaped the web site’s electronic grip it flashed a message calling the individual to go molest his own children.
“The deacon said he felt like he was looking into the face of Satan,” Land continued, adding, “He was.”
The New Testament casts Satan as a “roaring lion looking about for his prey,” Land said. “There is no doubt he prowls the Internet 24 hours a day.”
We must protect our families and especially our teenagers from this horrendous menace,” he continued, citing Rated-G Online as the most effective “fire break” he knows to keep this “spiritual and emotional cancer of cyber-porn out of our homes and away from our children.”
For more information about Rated-G Online, call the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission at 1-800-475-9127 or visit the agency’s web site at www.erlc.com.
