Thanks for sharing the Arundel County request with us. I identify with your anger, though I doubt they would benefit much from your expressing it. Whenever I encounter an ignorant schoolteacher, I try to be big about it and see them as a student looking for advice. With such a perspective in mind it might be appropriate simply to explain how they might better serve students by standing up to those parents who are offended than by caving in to censorship. "Avoiding all possible complaints" is a rather faint-hearted and empty-headed goal in a world like ours. A better example would be set by facing such challenges with courage and honesty. Sadly, schoolteachers like these usually know nothing more about the word integrity than how to spell it.

If I were a parent who found something morally offensive — say genocide, racism, militarism or homophobia — I would discuss it in depth with my child and expose him or her to it repeatedly, so that they would learn to be offended also. If there is any better way to be offended by the Holocaust than to see photos of starved bodies, for example, I'm not aware of it. The very fact that these parents want to hide information about the phenomena that offends them tells me that their antagonism is based more on emotional prejudice than intellectual judgment. It also means they don't think much of their own kids' ability to think.

How about this compromise: Allow them to mirror the site only if they include the following disclaimer: "WARNING: This resource is a CENSORED version of the original, which can be found at http://... etc." That will guarantee that the kids flock to the good stuff!

Do these parents really imagine that their children can't figure out how to type "lesbian feminist" into a search engine?? (I'm starting to get angry now, too!)