There was good news and bad news in
Judge John Jones III's ruling (139 pages, pdf) in the Dover, Pennsylvania, "intelligent design" case.
The good news was that Judge Jones, who was appointed to the federal bench by George W. Bush, ruled in no uncertain terms that intelligent design had no business being taught in the classroom. He said, among other things, that intelligent design was "not science," that it "violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation," relies on "flawed and illogical" arguments, and its attacks on evolution "have been refuted by the scientific community."
The bad news is that the traveling intelligent-design circus is coming to Michigan.
Last Wednesday's Detroit Free Press reported that the Ann Arbor-based Thomas More Law Center, which was behind the Dover case, is threatening similar litigation here in Michigan:
In Michigan, the Thomas More Law Center in Ann Arbor has threatened to sue Gull Lake Community Schools in the southwest Michigan community of Richland for refusing to allow two middle school science teachers to teach intelligent design.
snip
The Michigan teachers, Julie Olson and Dawn Wenzel, included the book "Of Pandas and People," which advocates intelligent design, on Gull Lake's annual textbook list. The teachers also added a lesson involving the book to the district's science curriculum.
The school board approved both, and the teachers taught intelligent design to middle school students for two years until a parent complained in the fall of 2004. That's when the district ordered the teachers to stop.
The superintendent said board members approved the overall book list and curriculum and didn't realize they were also approving something that included intelligent design. But the Thomas More Center maintained the district had approved teaching the controversial lessons, and it threatened to sue.
Note:"Of Pandas and People" is the same textbook that was at the center of the controversy in Dover.
In his opinion, Judge Jones had harsh words for the Thomas More Law Center which, along with the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, defended the school district's decision to allow intelligent design to be taught in the classroom:
Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist Court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on ID, who in combination drove the Board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy. The breathtaking inanity of the Board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources. (emphasis mine)
So what is the Thomas More Law Center? I visited its website the other day to find out more. The slogan on top of its homepage is "The Sword and Shield for People of Faith." According to the "About Us" portion of the website:
The Thomas More Law Center was established by Tom Monaghan and Richard Thompson, the former Oakland County, Michigan prosecutor, distinguished for his role in the prosecution of Jack Kevorkian.
Distinguished? His role in the Kevorkian cases was the main reason why Oakland Country Republicans ousted him in a primary election.
Moving on to the "Advisory Board" section of the site, I found, among others, former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn, former Alabama senator Jeremiah Denton, former ambassador and presidential and Senate candidate Alan Keyes, and Senator Rick Santorum--who's now trying to distance himself from the Center.
And I stared the Center's homepage long enough to find testimonials from the following: William A. Donoghue of the Catholic Conference; Ken Connor of the Family Research Council; Judie Brown of the American Life League; Frank Pavone, the head of Priests for Life; radio talk show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger; right-wing commentators Pat Buchanan and Sean Hannity; and D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Ministries, probably the most influential preacher you haven't heard of.
From all that we can deduce the following:
- The Thomas More Center is well-funded.
- It's outside the mainstream of American opinion.
- And even though it's funded and staffed by conservative Catholics, it has formed alliances with the Religious Right.
One more thing: although it lost the Dover case, it has only begun to fight. Reacting to the decision, the Center issued
a statement that reads in part:
Thompson continued, "The district court's decision today continues along this path of applying a fundamentally flawed jurisprudence. Unfortunately, until the Supreme Court adopts a more coherent and historically sound jurisprudence, school districts like Dover will be at risk of costly lawsuits by the ACLU for adopting such modest curriculum changes such as the one at issue."
Translation: We're going to keep litigating this issue until the courts get it right. The Gull Lake schools had better have their legal team warming up in the bullpen.