Tim Hortons apologizes for blocking gay news site Xtra!

Members of Toronto's LGBTQ community had cause for concern and, in some cases, outrage yesterday after it was discovered that the gay news site Dailyxtra.com was blocked in Tim Hortons locations. Xtra asked that Tim's reverse the block and make the site accessible to its customers. Publisher and editor-in-chief Brandon Matheson said Tim Hortons wrote the magazine and said the site wasn't "appropriate for all ages viewing in a public environment." The WiFi vendor also initially said there was no way to change or reverse the decision.

Tim Hortons did the right thing after the fact, though. They apologized, agreeing to restore access to Xtra in their stores. They chalked the incident up to what they say was a misunderstanding on the part of their third-party WiFi vendor. "We're working on unblocking your site. It never should have been blocked in the first place," Tim Hortons told the magazine. They added that the initial statement about the appropriateness of the site doesn't represent Tim Hortons' viewpoints. Xtra accepted the apology. "Tim Hortons has resolved the situation properly," Matheson told The Canadian Press.

In the end, it was a very Canadian exchange. (Read: everyone was insanely polite).Tim Hortons took ownership of the situation by apologizing to both the magazine and queer communities as a whole, and they're working on restoring access to the site. They responded quickly, too, which also deserves props. Too often, that doesn't happen with larger corporations and franchises.

And, fairly, Xtra's Rob Salerno reported that Tim's doesn't block all gay news sites. But it still isn't quite clear how the site came to be blocked in the first place. Who did it? Is the system automated, somehow? And if so, were sites like Victoria's Secret blocked? Because I don't think I've ever seen anything more 'risque' on Xtra than that. Using words like "cocks" can also cause sites to be blocked automatically. But those are words. On the laptop screen of another individual. That doesn't seem like cause enough to block access to an entire website, and a legitimate news website, at that.

I'm not trying to stir up another argument over an issue that's been resolved. I'm happy Tim Hortons responded so well, and that they're correcting their mistake. But I do think a wider discussion needs to be had about the censorship of sexuality, especially censorship of queer sexuality and identity or any other sort of 'alternate' sexuality. And I don't think the site should ever have been blocked.

What do you think?

Photo by seannyk on Flickr

by Sarah Ratchford via blogTO