Another day, another lunatic in state politics. This one is from Alabama, and he evidently has the patronage of Governor Bob Riley, who appointed him to the Alabama Textbook Committee and the Alabama Library Executive Board, two places he should never, ever have been.
But now he's introduced a bill allowing public school teachers to substitute alternative lessons to evolution, because...I don't know. You figure it out. It's just all too stupid for me.
The bill’s sponsor is Mack Butler, who represents the interests of Alabama’s 30th District at the state Capitol. Formally titled H.B. 592, the bill would see approved science surrounding “biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, and human cloning” subject to religious scrutiny by teachers in Alabama’s public schools.
Butler is now squarely in the sights of free speech and science policy advocates nationwide.
“This is a thinly-veiled attempt to open the door to religious fanatics who don’t believe in evolution, climate change or other scientifically-based teaching in our schools,” Susan Watson, executive director of the ACLU of Alabama, tells AL.com. “It also opens Alabama to costly litigation that it just cannot afford.”
The National Center for Science Education states on its website that, if enacted, Butler’s proposed legislation would “undermine the integrity of science education in the state by encouraging science teachers with idiosyncratic opinions to teach whatever anything they pleased and prevent responsible educational authorities from intervening.”
Here's the reason he gave for introducing this excuse to make Alabama schoolchildren ignorant and uncompetitive:
The lawmaker wrote on Facebook that his new bill would “encourage debate if a student has a problem learning he came from a monkey rather than an intelligent design!”
Just. Make. It. Stop.
