Louisiana Coalition for Science

“This bill is not about teaching creationism or religion.” — Rev. Gene Mills, Louisiana Family Forum Hammond Daily Star, 4/11/08

Update 6/1/10: The photo above is linked to Focus on the Family’s YouTube interview of Rev. Mills. In this interview, he explains that God is working through him in the Louisiana Family Forum’s public policy initiatives:

FOF Interviewer: What keeps you motivated? . . . What keeps you in the fight? What gives you energy?

Rev. Mills: You know, I find my inspiration in scripture, where it says that God’s purposes are found in me, and I best accomplish it when I’m expressing that witness or providing that testimony to those who need to know. And this is one way in which I can fulfill that basic life purpose — is expressing truth in the arenas where it doesn’t often go, including the public policy arena.

By Barbara Forrest

Ever since the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA) was introduced and subsequently enacted into law in 2008, the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), which “drafted and promoted” the bill, has sworn to high heaven (so to speak), that this legislation had not a thing to do with religion. The above statement by Rev. Gene Mills in his letter to the Hammond Daily Star is the most prominent and direct denial. (Mills wrote the letter in an effort to do some quick damage control after Sen. Ben Nevers told the newspaper that he introduced the bill because the LFF thought that “scientific data related to creationism should be discussed [in public schools] when dealing with Darwin’s theory.”) A year after penning this denial, Mills told Gambit Weekly pretty much the same thing. According to GW,

The bill’s original creator, the Louisiana Family Forum (LFF), a self-described ‘voice for traditional families in Louisiana,’ insists the new law is religiously neutral. According to the Rev. Gene Mills, the group’s director, ‘As written, it’s bulletproof.’ [bold added]

But as an analysis [pdf] of the LSEA shows, and as Mills himself later confirmed in a way that leaves no doubt, the Louisiana Science Education Act is all about religion.

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By Barbara Forrest

In April, Kurt Zimmermann, parent of a student at Farragut High School in Tennessee, asked the Knox County, Tennessee, School Board to remove his son’s honors biology textbook, Asking About Life, from the classroom because it refers to the biblical creation account as a “myth.” There is a Louisiana connection to this case: the only resource on which Zimmermann relied in his complaint was a textbook addendum written by Louisiana creationist Charles Voss. (He indicated this in response to the question on the complaint form, “What reviews of this material have you read?”) In his complaint, Zimmermann not only wanted the book removed from his son’s classroom but, according to the box he checked on the complaint form, he wanted it withdrawn “from all students as well as my child.” To the school board’s credit, at its April 7 meeting (see minutes) it rejected board member Karen Carson’s compromise proposal to offer Voss’s addendum as a resource to teachers. (See “Louisiana Creationist Textbook Addendum Rejected in Tennessee.”) A month later, when Zimmerman and his creationist supporters appeared again to press their case at the May 5 meeting, the Knox County School Board did what the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) should have done on January 13 and September 16, 2009, when creationists demanded and got control of the policy governing implementation of the Louisiana Science Education Act: they said no.

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By Barbara Forrest

To increase high school students’ exposure to evolutionary theory prior to their enrolling in a college biology course, a high school biology teacher in Louisiana could request to show his/her students Judgment Day. The program appears to meet the ‘supplemental instructional materials’ criterion of the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA). Certainly we would argue that viewing Judgment Day ‘promotes critical thinking skills, logical analysis, and open and objective discussion of scientific theories’ . . . by its thoughtful coverage of the information presented by witness[es] for both the plaintiffs and defendants. Although the LSEA has all the appearances of a stealth creationism document . . . , it does not prohibit a high school biology teacher from requesting to supplement the standard textbook with high-quality scientific material such as Judgment Day.

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