Apple officials acted only after a gay rights groups organized a petition protesting the app that attracted 146,000 signatures. But the NRB report said that Apple’s policies were “dangerously overboard and vague … and are, in some instances, viewpoint-censorious on the subject of religion.”

New Internet media giants such as Facebook, Apple and Google are not giving Christian and other faith-based groups a fair shake on the Web, according to a new report released Thursday by a religious broadcasters group.

The report, released Thursday by the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), stated that many of the biggest new Internet sites blocked Christian content and refused to accept faith-based advertisements. In particular, religious content taking a stand against homosexuality was blocked for fear of offending other users.

“Our conclusion is that Christian ideas and other religious content face a clear and present danger of censorship on Web-based communication platforms,” the 43-page report concluded.

Out of several major Internet-interactive “new media” platforms and service providers, only one – Twitter – did not exhibit a strong anti-Christian bias, according to the study.

Apple and its iTunes App Store, Facebook, MySpace (prior to its recent change in ownership), Google, Twitter, Comcast, AT&T and Verizon were reviewed for the NRB’s John Milton Project for Religious Free Speech, spearheaded by Craig Parshall, senior vice president and general counsel of the NRB.

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