Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Remember the school system in Iowa a couple months ago that had proposed a policy to establish a Bible course and a course in criticism of evolution? They came to their senses and removed those things from the policy.
Spencer school officials will throw out a Bible class and discard a critique of evolutionary theory to avoid being sued over the district's proposed "religious liberties" policy.The elective classes and other parts of the plan drew fire last month from civil rights activists who said they promoted Christian beliefs.
School board members have gone back to the drawing board.
We don't have the new proposed policy yet, so we'll have to keep an eye on the situation to make sure those things don't get slipped back in. But this is good news:
Although the policy "wasn't said clearly or explicitly, it was pretty clear it came from a fairly conservative Christian angle," said Bob Ready, president of the Iowa Secularists, a group that does not identify with a religion. "That's clearly going to come up for legal challenge."Ebeling said court battles aren't worth the fight.
"Certainly we do not want to create a legal challenge that the district loses or has to spend a lot of money on and win," he said.
Ready and other critics will review the next draft of Spencer's religious liberties policy.
Politics
Comments
Cue the religious right and "they hate baby Jebus!" While at the same time arguing that there wasn't anything religious about the "critique of evolution" and that "The Bible is the core of our culture and should be studied."
That they don't recognize that argument #1 counters arguments 2 and 3 makes this a lot less difficult than it could be if the religious reich were all on the same page.
Posted by: dogmeatIB | September 5, 2009 4:06 PM
That argument, while still imaginary, would be as ridiculous as those made by the Christian apologists who were outraged when their little flyover was canceled.
I'm I a bad person for enjoying their pouting so much?
Posted by: trog69 | September 5, 2009 5:54 PM
When my school district wanted to teach "problems with evolution" I said "Bring it on."
"OK class, lets see what idiotic misunderstandings of basic biology are required to take this one seriously."
Might be a lot of fun.
Posted by: BaldApe | September 5, 2009 6:09 PM
So is that a half-hearted abandonment of a fool's errand - have the fools gone back to put a different color lipstick on their pig or have they been drummed out of town?
Posted by: MadScientist | September 6, 2009 3:35 AM