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ACLU Endorses Ignorance in Pennsylvania
By Doug Patton
November 29, 2004
Seventy-nine years ago last summer, a legal carnival convened in the little town of Dayton, Tennessee, as the trial of John Scopes got under way. Banners and lemonade stands lined the streets. People joked that chimpanzees, brought to town to perform in sideshows, actually were in Dayton as witnesses for the trial.
On one side was the American Civil Liberties Union, which had offered to pay the legal expenses of anyone who would challenge a Tennessee law that banned the teaching of Darwin's theory of evolution in public schools and universities. Twenty-four-year-old local science teacher John Scopes was recruited to be charged with violating the law, and Clarence Darrow, long known for his agnostic views and hostility to Christianity, was recruited to head Scopes defense team.
On the other side were traditionalists who supported the law. They were represented by William Jennings Bryan, a former Member of Congress and populist two-time Democrat presidential candidate from Nebraska. Bryan, whose followers had succeeded in getting similar anti-evolution laws introduced into law in fifteen states, said in his opening statement that "if evolution wins, Christianity goes." Darrow argued, "Scopes isn't on trial; civilization is on trial."
And so it went, until Darrow finally asked that his own client be found guilty, a tactic he hoped would lead to a reversal upon appeal and which denied Bryan the opportunity, under Tennessee law, to make a closing statement. The trial would have long range ramifications for the state of public education in America and, in the process, diminish the reputations of both Bryan, who came off as a fundamentalist zealot, and Darrow, whom even liberal law professor Alan Dershowitz today contends showed himself to be "an anti-religious cynic."
Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 for teaching evolution, a penalty that was reversed on appeal (though on a legal technicality and not on constitutional grounds as Darrow had hoped).
Many a Christian fundamentalist has looked back on the Scopes trial as the beginning of a long slide toward the secularism that pervades American society today; and many an ACLU supporter has pointed to it as the beginning of enlightenment in American education. The truth lies somewhere in between.
I believe in creationism. I believe that God created the earth and everything on its face, including human beings. I think it takes a great deal more faith to believe in Darwin's theory of random selection than it does to believe that an all-powerful Supreme Being created all this with a purpose in mind.
That said, I also believe in academic freedom, a concept foreign to many on both sides of this argument, even today. Charging Scopes with a crime in 1925 was a huge mistake on the part of those attempting to stand up for creationism. What could have been a debunked theory if taught side by side with the truth became a crusade for the teaching of evolution as a fact.
Today, the ACLU finds itself in the role of the traditionalists eight decades ago. They scoff at those who believe in anything other than the orthodoxy of the day, and they fight tenaciously to defend their beliefs in the face of growing opposition.
ACLU involvement in a Dover, Pennsylvania, case clearly shows their desperation. Last month, the school board in this rural south-central Pennsylvania community became the first in the nation to mandate the teaching of "intelligent design," which holds that the universe is so complex that it must have been created by a higher power. The "higher power" is unspecified, but that does not matter to the zealots at the ACLU, who endorse ignorance because they believe that any mention or reference to anything remotely like a Supreme Being is "an establishment of religion" and therefore unconstitutional.
Imagine this as the beginning of a movement in American education, with frustrated parents and fed-up school board members taking matters into their own hands. If so, look for the panic to set in at the ACLU, with lawsuits galore as the 21st Century version of Scopes gets under way. Call it Scopes II, only this time the battle could be fought on as many fronts as there are school boards in America.
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Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a speechwriter, policy advisor and communications director for federal, state and local candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet websites. Readers can e-mail him at dpatton@neonramp.com.
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Note -- The opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, views, and/or philosophy of GOPUSA.
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