Main | Monday, April 29, 2013

Christian Groups Left With Egg On Their Faces Over Claims Of Military Censorship

Last week Fox News, Breitbart, Daily Caller, the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, and numerous Christian outlets claimed that the Pentagon had blocked the website of the Southern Baptists Convention in a "calculated move to censor the Christian message to the US military," as one article put it. Tony Perkins blasted out a press release on Friday:
While the rest of the world is hunting down real terrorists, the Obama military is still targeting Christians! After five years, the administration's intent is clear: to disarm the military of its biggest weapon and its greatest source of strength--Faith. Now, in the wake of the Boston jihadists and the Benghazi cover-up, it's clear where this focus on "Christians as the enemy" has led--to internal suspicion, mistrust, distractions, and the loss of the very right our troops are fighting to protect! It's time for every liberty-loving American to demand the end of this administration's war on religious liberty. Call your Congressman and both Senators today and demand that they hold the military leadership and the civilian political leadership accountable for this pattern of persecution. We cannot and must not tolerate these attacks on our First Freedom.
And now...the oops.
A piece of malware — and not government censorship — shut down access to the Southern Baptist Convention’s website on Army computers this week. Conservative Christian activists had accused the Defense Department of blocking www.SBC.net intentionally. They claim the military has become hostile to their view of faith. But the culprit turned out to be more mundane. Lt. Col. Damien Pickart, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military has software filters to ban pornography and gambling sites and to detect malware, malicious software that can harm other computers. One of those filters caught the malware on the Baptist site.
The Southern Baptists Convention says they have now removed the malware from their site.

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