By Barbara Forrest

Today, December 20, 2008, marks the third anniversary of the landmark decision in the first intelligent design (ID) creationism legal case, Kitzmiller et al. vs. Dover Area School District (2005). Ever since that ruling, the plaintiffs and those of us who served on their legal team in the now-famous “Dover trial” observe the anniversary by wishing each other an affectionate “Merry Kitzmas!” On December 20, 2005, in a Memorandum Opinion that a former Ohio judge described as “judicial poetry,” Judge John E. Jones III ruled that the 2004 ID creationist policy statement adopted by the Dover, PA, school board “violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States and . . . the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”

As an expert witness for the plaintiffs, I would like to thank Judge Jones for helping to preserve both the integrity of public school science education and the constitutional separation of church and state through his decision. I was honored to serve in his courtroom and in this case. But this year, the anniversary of the plaintiffs’ success in the Kitzmiller case has been turned bittersweet by my state’s refusal to learn the lessons of Dover and of our own history. Despite Louisiana’s passage of a 1981 creationist law and the subsequent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), which outlawed the teaching of creationism, the Louisiana legislature and Gov. Bobby Jindal, by respectively passing and signing the LA Science Education Act (LSEA), ensured that our state will remain tethered to the bottom of every national quality-of-life survey.

Just yesterday, December 19, the Michigan legislature ended its 2008 session without passing a similar bill that had languished in committee for months. The Louisiana and Michigan bills were two of six creationist bills introduced in state legislatures in 2008; all of them were coordinated by the Discovery Institute, the ID creationist think tank in Seattle. Five of these states — Alabama, South Carolina, Florida, Missouri, and now Michigan — had the good sense not to pass the bills. But despite the kick in the teeth they suffered in Dover, the Discovery Institute creationists are hell-bent on doing as much damage as possible. Next year, when state legislative sessions reopen in those five states and elsewhere, they will be back.

Although their always paper-thin credibility has been totally in tatters since Dover, ID creationists simply keep evolving, as creationists always do after court defeats. This year, working through the Louisiana Family Forum, the Discovery Institute creationists took aim at Louisiana, and the legislature and Gov. Bobby Jindal were only too happy to help them. And this was after Discovery Institute staffer Casey Luskin publicly criticized a Louisiana State University scientist, Dr. Bryan Carstens, who has chosen to live and work in Louisiana, and who testified against the LSEA before the Louisiana House Education Committee on May 21, 2008. Gov. Jindal quietly signed the LSEA on June 25, 2008, and the news hit the papers two days later. The Discovery Institute announced its victory at 7:18 a.m. on June 27.

Victory in Louisiana: Governor Jindal Signs Historic Science Education Act On Evolution and Education

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has signed into law the Louisiana Science Education Act, ensuring the state’s teachers their right to teach the scientific evidence both for and against Darwinian evolution. The bill enjoyed surprisingly overwhelming support from lawmakers. It was passed unanimously by the Louisiana state senate, and passed the state House by a vote of 93-4.

This week, as 2008 draws to a close, the news from Gov. Jindal’s office is that the budgets of our public universities must take a huge hit because of declining state revenues. This is not a new phenomenon in Louisiana. In the mid-1980s, universities endured a similar crisis. Only in recent years, during which university funding was given a high priority, has most of that damage been undone. However, because of their distrust of the very politicians whom they keep electing, Louisiana voters have either constitutionally or statutorily protected every area of the state budget except education and health care. So when the state falls on hard times, the young and the sick are the politicians’ first targets.

On top of that, our best-educated young people are leaving the state by the thousands, and Gov. Jindal has voiced his concern about this outward migration and the deficiencies in the Louisiana work force: “The reason people are leaving, Jindal says, is because of the lack of educational and economic opportunities in Louisiana. And Jindal says his administration is seeking to address the problem.” Well, you sure could have fooled us, Governor. Signing creationist bills into law is not what one does if one is concerned about the loss of the state’s best young minds.

Our fellow Americans around the country observe us with a combination of amusement and incredulity. Some have taken special notice of Louisiana’s politically self-inflicted injury to state science education. Dr. Gregory Petsko, president of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, which represents two of the most important areas of current scientific research, has called for a boycott of Louisiana by scientific societies not only in the United States but around the world.

As scientists we need to join such protests with our feet and wallets. The ASBMB Annual Meeting is scheduled to take place in New Orleans in April 2009. We have longstanding contractual obligations that require us to meet in Louisiana next spring. But I think we need to see to it that no future meeting of our society will take place in Louisiana as long as that law stands, nor should we hold it in any other state (are you listening, Michigan and Texas?) that passes a similar law. And I call upon the presidents of the American Chemical Society, the American Association of Immunologists, the Society for Neuroscience, and all the other scientific societies around the U.S. and the world, to join me in this action and make clear to the state legislators in Louisiana, the governor of the state, and the mayor and business bureau of New Orleans that this will be the consequence. You can do the same. Governor Jindal can be reached through his website (www.bobbyjindal.com/) and so can Mayor Ray Nagin (www.cityofno.com/Portals/Portal35/portal.aspx).  — Gregory Petsko, “It Is Alive,” President’s Message, ASBMB Today, August 2008 (emphasis added)

These are strong words, but, unfortunately, they are totally justified. Until the constituencies in Louisiana for scientific research and science education — and, one might add, for sheer common sense — develop an effective way to speak more loudly to the legislature and Gov. Jindal than do the Louisiana Family Forum and an out-of-state creationist think tank, this is the image that our beloved state will continue to have. We must find some way to repair the state’s image and earn the respect of our fellow Americans, who may then take seriously the proposition that Louisiana is a good place to live, work, and do business. There is one way to begin the process of earning this respect.

In Louisiana, “respect” must now be spelled “R-E-P-E-A-L.”