In New Zealand, McDonald's recently announced that all of their restaurants would have complimentary WiFi access, allowing patrons to surf the web while they dine. The only problem? It appears that McDonald's has employed a filtering software that is censoring and banning some LGBT content, including websites dedicated to gay news, reproductive and sexual health, and LGBT youth.

As GayNZ.com notes (they are one of the Web sites barred by McDonald's New Zealand): "After so many years of the internet being an integral part of most people's daily lives an organisation such as McDonald's must by now be able to find a more sophisticated way of judging the suitability of actual content for your restaurants rather than just blocking out wholesale an entire site which provides much valuable and family-friendly lifestyle information and service."

McDonald's has suggested that they'll work with LGBT web sites to discuss becoming more open in the future. Please encourage the company to do that, and allow valuable information for LGBT people to be accessed in their restaurants. Barring this information only reinforces the dangerous stereotype that LGBT content can't be considered family friendly or appropriate for public consumption, and that's a harmful message for any entity, let alone a major multinational corporation, to send.