Louisiana Coalition for Science

The Discovery Institute, a creationist think tank in Seattle, and the LA Family Forum (LFF — the LA affiliate of Focus on the Family) are collaborating to sneak intelligent design creationism into Louisiana’s public schools under the false banner of “academic freedom.” In order to provide the truth about their jointly engineered legislation, which is written in creationist code language [1] and is advancing through the Louisiana legislature, links are posted below to two recent interviews by WWL TV with LCFS member Barbara Forrest. These are followed by links to articles Forrest has written about the ID movement.

Background: Sen. Ben Nevers (Bogalusa, LA) filed his original bill, SB 561, the “LA Academic Freedom Act,” in March 2008 at the beginning of the regular legislative session. On April 17, without dissent, ignoring teachers and distinguished scientists who opposed the bill, the Senate Education Committee passed an amended bill that was renumbered as SB 733 and renamed the “LA Science Education Act.” The full Senate subsequently passed the bill by a vote of 35-0. On May 21, the House Education Committee, disregarding opposition to the bill by scientists and educators from Louisiana public schools and universities, unanimously approved it after adding an amendment. The full House passed the bill with a vote of 94-3 on June 11. Because of the amendment, the bill must now return to the Senate, after which it goes to Gov. Jindal. The governor can either sign the bill or allow it to become law without his signature, or he can — and should— veto it, thereby putting an end to the attempt by the Discovery Institute and the LFF to use Louisiana school children as pawns in the advancement of their Religious Right agenda.

• May 25, 2008: WWL Sunday Morning Show interview with Barbara Forrest, Dominique Ditoro Magee (SB 733 supporter), and Sen. Nevers (by phone). Forrest spoke against the bill before the House Education Committee on May 21. Magee spoke in favor of it before both the Senate and House Education Committees. She testified that, as a high school student, when she objected to material about evolution in her biology textbook, her teacher had allowed her to bring “addendums” to class and discuss them with her classmates. (See backgrounder [pdf] on earlier version of the legislation for more detail on her comments.) The addendums she brought to class were creationist materials. Forrest refers in the May 25 video to a 2001 interview with Magee in Family Voice, the magazine of Concerned Women for America, which revealed this. Magee, who was about fifteen at the time, stated in the interview that her interest in the subject had begun during her freshman year of high school, when she “decided to disprove the theory of evolution” in a ten-minute presentation to her speech class. She stated that she felt that “they [textbooks] either need to put creation in the textbooks, too, or take evolution out.” The addendums to which Magee referred are most likely the creationist addendums written by long-time Baton Rouge creationist Charles Voss. She testified that her mother, Lennie Ditoro, had told her about the addendums that she took to class. Mrs. Ditoro is the former chair of the LA Family Forum’s Education Resource Council and former state director of Concerned Women for America. Voss has written such addendums for state-approved biology textbooks in Louisiana and has posted them at his website, TextAddons.com. LFF operative Darrell White, who partners with Voss to promote creationism in Louisiana, has also posted these addendums on his own website. The LA Family Forum also promotes them on its website (pdf).

• June 11, 2008: WWL Morning Show interview with Barbara Forrest and Rev. Gene Mills, executive director of the LA Family Forum (by phone). The LFF is the organization on whose behalf Sen. David Vitter had earmarked $100,000 of taxpayer funds to finance its implementation a creationist “academic freedom” policy (pdf) in the Ouachita Parish, LA, school district until his scheme was discovered by the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

1. * For background on the Discovery Institute’s strategic shift to creationist code language, see Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross, “Intelligent Design Has Distinctly Evolutionary Nature,” Science & Theology News, December 2004. For a more recent discussion, see Barbara Forrest, Understanding the Intelligent Design Creationist Movement: Its True Nature and Goals (pdf), Center for Inquiry Position Paper, July 2007, pp. 19-22.