'Tempest' Brewing Over District's Statement on Evolution and Intelligent Design
by Jim Brown and Jody Brown
July 20, 2005
(AgapePress) - A federal court is being asked to dismiss an ACLU lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a Pennsylvania school district's science policy.The American Civil Liberties Union and the group Americans United for Separation of Church and State are challenging a new policy that requires teachers in the Dover School District to read a one-minute statement at the beginning of ninth-grade biology classes. Students are told that evolution is a theory that contains flaws, and that intelligent design is an alternative explanation for the origins of life.
Richard Thompson is president of the Thomas More Law Center, which is representing the district. He says the ACLU's claims that the policy violates the so-called "separation of Church and State" are unfounded.
"This is really a tempest in a teapot," Thompson asserts. "Basically a one-minute statement, where intelligent design is mentioned twice, would never have been considered by our founding fathers -- when they wrote the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment -- [to constitute] establishment of religion in [violation] of that clause."
According to the attorney, the brief disclaimer that teachers are required to read does not promote religion -- in fact, the policy expressly forbids that. "This minor change to Dover's science curriculum was simply a modest step by a small-town school board to improve the science education of its students," he says.
A press release from the Michigan-based Law Center notes the ACLU's persistence in using the Establishment Clause as a means to remove from public life anything that might be considered favorable to religion -- things such as prayer, display of the Ten Commandments, and Nativity scenes. But even recent Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution, says the TMLC, do not go to the extent being espoused by the ACLU to prevent students from simply being told that alternatives to Darwinism exist.
"The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State are so zealously attacking this one-minute statement because they don't want any [indications] of success by any school board that questions Darwin's theory," Thompson explains. Their opposition, he contends, is based on a fear that "once that starts, you know, it's like trying to plug a hole in the dike."
The ACLU and the judge have yet to respond to the district's motion for summary judgment. A trial date as already been set for late September.
