The ass hamsters are at it again, this time in Oklahoma, where House Bill 2211 has just passed the state House of Representatives. If you don’t want to read the Bill, here’s the summary from the Edmond Sun:
The bill requires public schools to guarantee students the right to express their religious viewpoints in a public forum, in class, in homework and in other ways without being penalized. If a student’s religious beliefs were in conflict with scientific theory, and the student chose to express those beliefs rather than explain the theory in response to an exam question, the student’s incorrect response would be deemed satisfactory, according to this bill.
The school would be required to reward the student with a good grade, or be considered in violation of the law. Even simple, factual information such as the age of the earth (4.65 billion years) would be subject to the student’s belief, and if the student answered 6,000 years based on his or her religious belief, the school would have to credit it as correct.
How does such a patently ridiculous thing even become a law (before we even get to the question of that whole “Church and State” thing again) in the first place?
HB 2211 is identical to bills widely introduced into state legislatures across the nation, where they have met various fates. Texas’s Legislature passed it, and Texas is experiencing serious problems as a result. Liberty Legal Institute of Plano, Texas, a group of fundamentalist Christian lawyers, drafted the bill and promoted to legislatures, including Oklahoma’s. It was not written by its Oklahoma legislative “authors.”
Well, I guess that explains that, then. (I would normally mock the notion of Plano, Texas at this point, but I’ll skip that this time in deference to L. Sprague de Camp.)
Oh, yeah, one other thing–guess who was listed as the principal author of the bill? Rep. Sally Kern
The good news is that this has some locals riled up. The Oklahoma Academy of Science
