What Part of "Shall Not Be Construed to Promote Any Religious Doctrine" Does the Darwin-only Lobby Not Understand?
An attorney friend e-mailed me to say:
It's so much easier to write scary stories when the legislation itself is NOT ever quoted. Isn't there some sort of journalistic standard that should at least urge a reporter to quote the primary source?You would think that with passage of a law like the Louisiana Science Education Act, now headed to the governor's office for signing, that the law itself would be quoted in response to bogus charges by malcontents. As we've learned, that just doesn't happen much. A slew of articles have been running in which activists like Barbara Forrest make the false claim that the LSEA opens the door to religion in the classroom. Not so.
Section 1D of the bill clearly states
that it
"shall not be construed to promote any religious doctrine, promote discrimination for or against a particular set of religious beliefs, or promote discrimination for or against religion or non-religion."Today's Baton Rouge Advocate carries a story that repeats these claims, and while it quotes the bill's sponsor saying that isn't the case, it never bothers to tell readers what the bill says. If people are concerned they should read the bill for themselves and make up their own mind.