Despite a law being found unconstitutional, the Louisiana House Education Committee killed a measure to repeal it, making this the second time in as many months that the state has sided in favor of teaching creationism in public schools.
Last month, the Louisiana Senate Education Committee failed to repeal the Science Education Act, which allows creationism to be taught in public school science classes. This week, the House Education committee killed a measure to repeal the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act.
The 1981 creationism law prohibited the teaching of evolution theory unless creationism was also taught. Although the Supreme Court ruled in 1987 in Aguillard v. Edwards that the law was unconstitutional because it was “clearly” intended to “advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind,” which violates the First Amendment, the law was never officially repealed.
When the Louisiana House Education Committee voted not to repeal the law, state Senator Ben Nevers (D) had agreed with keeping the law in case the Supreme Court ever reversed its decision.
“There’s no good reason to keep an unconstitutional law on the books,” Josh Rosenau, programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education. “But since a law which has been struck down is dead letter, the choice to remove it is symbolic, too.”
This vote is a reminder that recent battles over the misnamed Louisiana Science Education Act, and dozens of similar laws introduced across the country, are part of a larger and longer battle. Today’s efforts may be less overtly religious, but only because that’s the strategy necessary to evade court scrutiny. If today’s advocates of intelligent design and ‘critical analysis of evolution’ had their druthers, they’d be passing ’80s-style equal time laws, or the sorts of outright bans on teaching evolution which brought us 1925′s Scopes trial.
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Roseneau has fought against creationism already, taking up arms against the Kansas Board of Education in 2005. He has emphasized that it is not Christianity he is fighting because there are significant divisions within the religion.
Louisiana is a state traditionally dominated by Catholic politicians, but recent years have brought growing influence by evangelical Protestants. Groups like the Louisiana Family Forum, an affiliate of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, have reportedly left Catholic politicians fearful of being tarred as anti-Christian if they oppose the radical, right-wing, evangelical Protestant agenda.
The Pope and much of the Catholic hierarchy are pro-evolution, and evolution is freely taught at major Catholic high schools and middle schools. Catholic colleges and universities like Loyola and Notre Dame are major hubs of evolutionary research. The anti-evolution agenda represents a small wing of evangelical Protestantism, not Christianity in general.
With people like Roseneau fighting against creationism being taught in classrooms and people like Senator Nevers expecting the Supreme Court to make it legal, it seems that Louisiana will continue to be a hotbed for the issue and continue drawing supporters for both sides.
Photo: ellenm1/Flickr
I find if mind blowing that Louisianna can be nearly perfect (second place) for its standards, assessments and accountability, while landing in 48th place for K-12 achievement. http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/01/louisianas_rank_rises_on_natio.html Can they really be that accountable to standards if performance is that low? It’s nice to know that they have a good rubric. But maybe they are setting the bar too high. You have to stair step students up for success. Can’t expect them to get from A – Z without helping students master learning at more basic levels. Sounds like a case where the board of education is good at writing… Read more »
The law basically punished the state’s public school students for having the misfortune of being unable to get into or pay for private schools or homeschooling. This law no doubt had a chilling effect on their graduates’ ability to get into good colleges. If I were an admissions administrator at a place with robust science departments, I’d take very careful note of all states that have such laws. Lots of luck on the AP Biology test. Lots of luck testing out of college-level science classes. Lots of luck with your college geology and astronomy classes, if you think the universe… Read more »
Good point. Any state getting oil revenue should seriously think twice about crippling the geological sciences. I’d love to see them try to require the state to only give public contracts or state licenses to companies that support creationism and not do business with those evil “Darwinists.” Bye-bye biotech, medicine, petroleum, etc. Not bloody likely. “Darwinism” butters their bread.