Ignorant Values
So, lately The Gambit‘s Twitter account hasn’t exactly been the bearer of good news…among its latest tidbits of legislators behaving badly came this one from last week:
BREAKING: @RepealtheLSEA fails by 1-5 vote of state education committee. Sole vote to repeal: Yvonne Dorsey, D-Baton Rouge.
…followed by this insult to that injury:
LSEA: “All of you have been able to get out of high school despite this ‘terrible’ law.” – Rep. Julie Quinn, R-Metairie, voting no on repeal
Well, at least we know who doesn’t believe the children are our future.
The Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), for those not in the know, can be found here. It is an intriguing and craftily creative exercise in how to allow creationism to be taught alongside the theory of evolution in public elementary and secondary schools in Louisiana without explicitly mentioning the word “creationism”. If there is anything in this act that could possibly work in the favor of keeping the supplemental teachings of the C-word out of the science classes, it is this self-referential Section D caveat within:
This Section shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or nonreligion.
…but saying that only that section is not promoting any religion or any discriminatory practice gets us into the realm of “It depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is.”
This piece of garbage was signed into law by our governor nearly three years ago. One of the immediate reactions to Bobby Jindal’s signature on it was for organizations such as the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology to take their conventions elsewhere, kicking New Orleans’ recovery in the teeth in the process. And now it seems the only thing that will peel this complete nonsense back will be many, many expensive days in court that we as a state cannot afford, all because the Louisiana Family Forum, in concert with the Discovery Institute, has successfully imposed its values on the rest of us poor schmos.
What is the Louisiana Family Forum, and how were things allowed to get this far? Well, let’s let Lamar tell you. They showed the lege the money through exploiting some non-profit organizational loopholes themselves, and now we have the LSEA. It’d be a perverse thing of beauty if it weren’t wielded in the service of such stunning ignorance. It is in an atmosphere such as this when sometimes, a child shall and must lead.
Enter Zack Kopplin and his campaign to repeal the LSEA. It begins with the following:
While the misnamed and misguided Louisiana Science Education Act claims to promote critical thinking in schools, it is really stealth legislation worded in a way that attempts to dodge the Supreme Court rulings against teaching creationism (and its offshoot intelligent design) in the public school science class. Louisiana’s kids deserve the best education possible, and should be taught proper and truthful science rather than religion in their science classes. We need to be taught real science in order be successful in today’s global economy.
If that weren’t enough for most people -and it apparently isn’t - the reasons why such an act is wrong are in this post, and it snowballs from there, to the point where Kopplin is ready to up the ante despite being “stunned at the way (Rep. Julie Quinn) attacked the other kids (at the State Education Committee Hearing). We had about 30 kids, and she went after them.”
To borrow a few pages from the Christian bible the LFF, Livingston Parish, and Louisiana legislators like Quinn seem to revere so, too many hearts have been hardened like Pharaoh’s in the course of this mess. What plagues will be brought upon us as a result? Am I the only one who thinks the continued ignorance of the average Louisiana public school student is a pretty damned big one that isn’t worth all of this grief? Not to mention all the money that will be poured down the drain should the defense of this act ever enter the courts…
Louisiana legislators: let our children go.
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How is this still an issue!? After years of outright lies claiming that ID is not creationism, the light was finally shown on these charlatans in a small district in Pennsylvania. See Kitzmiller v Dover ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitzmiller_v._Dover_Area_School_District ) There’s an excellent Nova at the PBS website that follows the trial: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/intelligent-design-trial.html
I first saw this on it’s original air date and have seen it several times since. (In fact, I think I’ll watch it again after this rant!) One of the many lies fomented in this trial was that the ID textbook in question, ‘Of Pandas and People’, was NOT a creationist tool. Unfortunately for the creationists, the original draft of the book was uncovered and entered into evidence. Both the original draft and the published text are identical -word for word- with one exception: Every instance of the term “Intelligent Design” in the published book had been changed from “Creationism” in the original manuscript!
Now I’ve seen plenty of these horror stories that end with the Creationists winning their court cases and as the show drew nearer to it’s end, I began to get that sinking feeling again. Darn you, you Nova rascals, ya got me!! Final score: Intelligence 1; Intelligent Design 0! And this was a Federal Case!
The presiding judge, John E Jones, III ,-whose 139 page decision is one of the most clear, concise and fair opinions I have ever read, and whom I e-mailed thanks and support immediately after the programs end- was thouroughly lambasted by the Coulter/O’Reilly camp as being a liberal, activist, bleeding heart commie. Except Jones is a Republican and a George W Bush appointee!! His judgement was that “intelligent design is a form of creationism, and that the school board policy violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.” Soon after the trial, the Dover School Board members who enacted the policies forcing the ID curriculum into the schools were voted out of office.
So, since there is a Federal ruling which states that ID is Creationism and violates the United States Constitution, I ask again, HOW is this still an issue!? Are none of the legal minds in our state aware of KvD? Is there some ancillary clause to the Napoleonic Code that trumps the US Constitution in matters regarding religion in schools? Or does the Jindal Mob simply rely on our Louisiana educations being so poor that we couldn’t possibly understand or notice that they are pushing ignorance and lies on our children in order to promote their personal beliefs on those whom they disdain for disagreeing with them?
Cripes! It just dawned on me why I (and probably many others) don’t remember Kitz v Dover. October – November 2005. We were all mopping sludge out of our homes, those of us who still had them! Maybe Bobby’s Mob really doesn’t understand that they’re defying the US Constitution!
I wish that were the case. I think they just don’t care, and they’ll have to be proven wrong in court. Cynical and sad, I know, but that’s probably what will happen.