Did Google Flag Anti-Gay MassResistance’s Blog as Hate Speech?

Pulling links off your website is significant stuff when you’re a state agency. But what about when you’re the world’s largest search engine? After yanking an anti-gay (sorry, “pro-family”) site from its results pages, Google is now facing the wrath of … well, bigots.

The search giant is accused of pulling MassResistance.org, the Massachusetts straight-marriage only advocacy site. It happened the first time because Google claimed the site hosted malware that infected visitors’ computers, according to (fellow anti-gay site) One News Now. Clicking through from Google encounters no problem now.

But MassResistance’s blog, on Google’s on Blogger platform, now appears with a “content warning” splash page that visitors must click through to access. As MassResistance head Brian Camenker notes, quoting from Blogger’s policy pages: ‘Users may not publish material that promotes hate towards groups based on race, ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, and sexual orientation/gender identity. Of course we are not promoting hate against anybody; all we’re saying is that this is what’s happening and there’s some dangerous stuff going [on] here.”

And we’re just loving their conspiracy theories: “How did we earn the “objectionable” award? Who’s gunning for us? We’re sure GLAD, Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, is very unhappy with us (along with their co-conspirators on the GLBT blogosphere). Since we recently posted on GLAD’s transgender rights bill [here, here, here & here], we assume it riled quite a few individuals on its staff.”

But here’s the rub: If Google/Blogger thought MassResistance was actually publishing hate speech, it would’ve yanked the site entirely. No content warning; just a complete removal. They’ve done it before. The content warning splash page is likely a result of user flagging and complaints about “sensitive material.”