Internet Censorship

Oh good grief!

This is day three of our temporary residence in room 1220 here at Good Samaritan Hospital. For the most part, it has been fine, and we've not had much that would cause us to complain. However, this morning, I am feeling completely crabby about the place's Internet censorship policy.

Here's the way the paperwork reads that we were given as we registered:

Free Wireless Internet Service --
Because we want you to have a good experience at Good Samaritan Hospitals, we are providing Wireless Internet Service to you free of charge. We offer this service as a way to continue your life while being inside the hospital.
TriHealth ascribes to a set of values that help direct our daily choices. To ensure that we are honoring those values -- respect for all people, stewardship, service excellence for all customers, response to community needs, respect for our spiritual heritage and valuing differences – we use a filtering program. While most sites are accessible through our free Wireless Internet Service, we will filter sites that conflict with our values (such as pornographic or gambling sites).
So...

I can't get to a good number of places that I regularly visit. If your site is identifiable by the filtering program as having sexual content or adult content of any sort, I can't get to it -- even though I am an adult. There are many sites that I can't access from here in the hospital that I can easily get to from school. Go figure!

At first, I found it just annoying and frustrating, but I'm working my way up to fullblown anger over it all. I might be less angry if their policy statement simply made it clear that they are praticing moralistic, judgemental censorship that declares that their choices are more right than those that others might make. But they are at great pains to claim that they respect all people and value differences. Since that is part of their organizational value system, I wonder why I don't feel respected or valued? Grrrrrr...

Wikipedia tells us that censorship is the suppression of speech or the deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor. Moral censorship, is the removal of materials that censor deems, or thinks, to be obscene or otherwise morally questionable.

I've long worked in school settings where Internet filtering, and consequent censorship is just part of the deal. I'm not at all opposed to adults making decisions and choices about what is and is not appropriate for the children in their care to access. However that is not in play here. We are not children.

Too, I understand that this is a hospital that has a religious affiliation. Fine. However, this is not a hospital that limits its client base to those who share the same religious perspective. This hospital will quite happily bill our insurance for the full price of the care they've provided, and they will not feel the need to "filter" their charges based on moral judgements about our choices. Our money is perfectly good, even if our morals are seemingly objectionable. Blech!

Oh yeah, and one other thing about hanging out with folks who are unable to hear or understand because the static of their religious views drowns out everything else -- why is it that, in spite of clear directions to the contrary, the hospital chaplains insist on coming in to visit? Get a clue, please! Those blank stares that we're giving them until they leave are obviously not registering.

swan