Broadband provider censors ‘Gay’

Pinknews reports that a lesbian called ‘Gay’ has been reprimanded for using her name in work e-mails. Gay Hamilton of New Zealand was sent an automated e-mail from the broadband provider Telecom which read:

“[Your email] was identified by our content filtering processes as containing language that may be considered inappropriate for business-like communication. The content which caused this to happen was … ‘gay’ eight times, at two points each, for an expression score of 16 points.” Ms. Hamilton and LGBT around the world are most disturbing by the fact that Telecom seem to think “gay” is an offensive word. Lenska Papich, public relations manager for Telecom’s broadband and online division, says, “our systems internally detect a number of words, including both the words ‘gay’ and ‘heterosexual,’ that could be deemed as inappropriate for use at work..” Telecom has since apologised to Gay Hamilton, but will not disclose its full list of censured words.