Look Who's in Bed with Whom!

by Ardea Skybreak

Revolutionary Worker #1216, October 19, 2003, posted at rwor.org

How Intelligent Design Creationists Teamed Up with a Notorious Gay-Bashing Senator and Almost Succeeded in Replacing Science with Religion in the Public School Science Classrooms

This is an interesting story which reveals a lot about the kind of people who are currently involved in leading the anti-evolution campaign in the United States and how they are taking their agenda into--and getting backing and aid from--the highest levels of government.

Remember Rick Santorum, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania who was broadly denounced (by just about everyone except the White House) for making outrageous statements comparing homosexuality to incest, bigamy and adultery? In the Spring of 2003 Santorum spoke to Associated Press reporters about a case that was about to come before the Supreme Court which involved reactionary bedroom police anti-sodomy laws still on the books in (where else?) Texas. Santorum stated that he "has a problem with homosexual acts" and that he is opposed to "acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships" which he sees as contributing to the breakdown of society and traditional family values. Santorum argued that states should have the right to regulate private sexual practices in people's own homes (!) and he expanded on this, stating that:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

Despite howls of protest from all directions and calls for Santorum to step down, he stood by his comments. Not surprisingly, the White House refused to denounce his views. This incident shows the degree to which Christian fundamentalists in the United States now occupy positions of power and influence and how they are all too willing to use the power of the state apparatus to try to impose a whole package of essentially fascist measures in the name of "defending traditional family values."

If the name Rick Santorum rings a bell, it is probably because this is the very same reactionary senator who, in the summer of 2001, tried to get the anti-evolution "Santorum Amendment" added to the language of the No Child Left Behind Education Act, the biggest package of education reforms since 1965. Up to that point, the anti-evolution forces had focused most of their efforts on trying to weasel their way into local school boards or get laws changed at the state level. They had made some significant headway in confusing some sections of the general public, but had ultimately lost a number of big court cases as they sought legal backing to force science teachers to water down the teaching of evolution science and give "equal time" to religious Creationism in science classrooms. Every time they have tried that tactic, hundreds of scientists from many different fields of science have rallied to forcefully argue that all forms of Creationism ( including Intelligent Design theory) are not science but religion, and therefore do not belong in the science classroom.

Having mostly lost their cases at the state level (in particular a critical defeat for the creationists in relation to the overturning of the 1999 Kansas school board decision to eliminate evolution from state science tests) the Creationists seem to be regrouping and attempting to set their sights even higher--no doubt encouraged by the fact that the current fundamentalist President himself refuses to acknowledge that evolution is an established scientific fact (he has actually publicly stated that in his opinion the "verdict is still out" on evolution!) The Creationist movement is now attempting to get anti- evolution laws passed at the federal level so as to better impose the teaching of religious Creationism all throughout the country. And they are trying to get over with this not so much by openly making a case for the teaching of Biblical Creationism, but by arguing that the theory of evolution is "unproven" or "controversial" and that therefore the rival theory of Intelligent Design is an "alternative scientific theory" which deserves to be taught to students. Of course, the basic theory of biological evolution is actually very well proven, and its basic facts are not at all controversial in the overall scientific community, but the creationist movement has never let facts get in the way of its agenda!

Amazingly, Intelligent Design Creationists from the Discovery Institute's Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture were actually able to organize a formal Capitol Hill briefing in the summer of 2000 to "educate" Congress about the supposed failure of Darwinism and the societal damage being caused by the continued teaching of the Darwinian theory of evolution in the schools. Prominent representatives of Intelligent Design (including law professor and chief IDC ideologue Philip Johnson) actually helped draft the language of the amendment introduced by Senator Santorum. At the time, Santorum tried to downplay the significance of his proposed amendment to the education bill--calling it an "innocuous two sentences"--in the hopes of getting it passed.

The original amendment crafted by the Intelligent Designers and introduced by Santorum read: "It is the sense of the Senate that --1) good science education should prepare students to distinguish the data or testable theories of science from philosophical or religious claims that are made in the name of science; and 2) where biological evolution is taught, the curriculum should help students understand why this subject generates so much continuing controversy, and should prepare the students to be informed participants in public discussion regarding this subject."

This is a good example of how the Creationists try to get over these days: they start off with the first point, which most people can readily agree with, in order to smuggle in the second point which at first "sounds fair" to a lot of people. The problem is that:

  1. it raises the possibility that evolution should perhaps not always be taught in science classrooms (but how could we ever justify not teaching the theory of evolution when it is the most foundational theory of all the modern life sciences?);
  2. it makes it seem like evolution is unproven and that it is controversial in the scientific community (when the basic facts of evolution are in fact well proven and not at all controversial in the overall scientific community); and
  3. it proposes that whether evolution is true or not should be resolved by public debate , despite the fact that the scientific community overwhelmingly insists that the basic theory of evolution is as well supported and documented as the theory of gravity or the fact that the earth goes around the sun. Think about it: should we also be asking people to hold "debates" so they can decide for themselves whether those well-established scientific facts are true or not? Of course not. Scientific theories which have been repeatedly tested and verified (including the theory of evolution, of gravitation, of the movement of the planets around the sun, etc.) should be taught as what they are: well-established scientific facts .

Unfortunately, while there is in the U.S. a general recognition of the importance of science and many of its concrete achievements, the level of scientific literacy of the population as a whole is actually extremely low. This makes it easier for various kinds of Creationists to get over and mislead people just by trying to sound "scientific" (just by throwing in a few scientific words and concepts along with their mystical hocus pocus), even though there is actually nothing scientific about what they are putting forward or about the methods they are using. These days the Intelligent Design Creationists in particular are rather skilled at confusing and misleading even generally "educated" people, including members of the press and other influential sectors of society. A low level of scientific literacy (working hand in hand with some reactionary social and political agendas) may well have contributed to the astounding fact that U.S. senators initially approved the Santorum amendment 91-8, with not a single Senator speaking against it!

It was only later, when this was taken up in joint House and Senate discussions, that the decision was made to leave the anti-evolution (and anti-science) Santorum Amendment out of the education bill. The Santorum Amendment did not become federal law after all, but it sure came close!

If at first you don't succeed, lie, lie again:

In a move that illustrates the typical unprincipled methods of the Creationists, many of them are trying to mislead people into thinking that the amendment did pass (when it did not) and that there is now a federal law on the books that says that teachers must teach Intelligent Design Theory alongside evolution in the science classrooms. But this is simply not true (not yet anyway!). The Santorum amendment did not make it into the final text of the No Child Left Behind Act (Public Law 107- 110) signed by Bush in 2002. It did get included in the background discussion notes which accompanied this education bill (which is bad enough!), but it was not incorporated into the actual federal law . However, none of this has kept some of the Creationists from continuing to spread the lie that federal law now requires teachers to teach Intelligent Design, as they did recently in the State of Ohio when they tried to get Creationist "alternative theories to evolution" imposed in the science curriculum of public schools (these creationists' efforts were recently defeated, and evolution is correctly being given strong emphasis in the Ohio science curriculum).

Perhaps the creationists hope that if they just keep repeating their lies long enough, these lies will eventually become accepted as fact. In a land of short attention spans, general scientific illiteracy, and given that they have the backing of some of the top players in the federal government, Creationists may yet manage to get over with this. This is yet another reason for people of integrity to really try to uncover and become familiar with the actual truth of things.