Religious Broadcasters' Study: Social Networks 'Actively Censoring Christian Viewpoints'

If we post this story on Facebook, will the company remove it? According to a new study from the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB) and the American Center for Law and Justice, there's a good chance it will.

NRB conducted a study of "the practices of Apple and its iTunes App Store, Google, Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter, as well as Internet service providers AT&T, Comcast and Verizon." Its conclusion: with the notable exception of Twitter, "social media websites are actively censoring Christian viewpoints.

Specifically, social media sites have proscribed any content critical of the homosexual lifestyle and the gay agenda, under the guise of banning "hate speech." Apple has in the past year removed two iPhone apps from it iTunes App Store. Facebook, which has collaborated with Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination (GLAAD), "has indicated that it will delete all instances of content that it considers to be anti-homosexual," according to NRB.

Google is a stand-out offender. Google for Non-Profits refuses to list "churches, ministries, and other faith groups that consider religion or sexual orientation in their hiring practices," according to The New American. According to the Christian Post: "Google has also committed a number of free speech violations, the NRB report alleges. The world's most powerful search engine initially prohibited the English Christian Institute from purchasing space for an advertisement about abortion. It also allegedly blocked a Massachusetts pro-family website because of its conservative Christian content."

Unfortunately, Google's attitude is unsurprising. This past April, the Culture and Media Institute noted that, when Good Friday and Earth Day fell on the same day, Google chose to honor Gaia over Christ with its famous logo.

The company's stewardship of YouTube, the massively popular video site it owns, shows little regard for moral or family concerns. "BlueTube," a 2009 Special Report from CMI, found that although YouTube's guidelines stated it was "not for pornography or sexually explicit content," there was plenty of sexual material, including soft-core straight and gay porn, all over the site. In fact, YouTube was widely used as a marketing vehicle for porn sites.

NRB stated it had invited the companies cited in its study to discuss their policies. Hopefully NRB has better luck with that than CMI had in 2009. Repeated attempts to get Google officials to comment on the "BlueTube" findings failed. An NRB official said, "We want to work with, not against, these companies as much as possible. But they've come out of the gate pretty hostile to people of faith."