Brogdon Bill Bites Dust; Committee Considers Kern Measure

(The image to the right is from PhotoTune.)

It’s good news for Oklahoma students and the state’s scientific community that a legislative committee defeated an anti-evolution bill this week.

But a pending bill, sponsored by state Rep. Sally Kern, pictured right, still threatens to bring more religion into our public schools.

The defeated bill, disingenuously called the Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act, was killed by the Senate Education Committee, which voted 7 to 6 against the measure. State Sen. Randy Brogdon, an Owasso Republican, sponsored the legislature, which is now supposedly dead for two years, according to legislative rules.

I write “supposedly dead” because legislators will sometimes attach the language of some measures to other bills.

As I wrote recently in an Oklahoma Gazette article, “The bill had the potential to dumb down Oklahoma students, who, under the bill, couldn’t be penalized because they subscribed “to a particular position on scientific theories,” (i.e., anti-evolution dogma). Teachers could feel pressured to bring religious or political ideas masquerading as pseudoscience into science classrooms. This dumbing down could reduce the state’s ability to produce physicians, scientists and medical workers or deter people from the state’s medical research community.”

In essence, SB 320 would have allowed the state’s science teachers to present information challenging evolution theory, which the legislation labeled controversial. But the theory is only controversial in a religious sense because it seems to contradict creationism.

The bill was a disingenuous attempt to get intelligent design ideas in the science classroom. Intelligent design is creationism masquerading as science. It argues the world is so complicated it must have been created by a designer, but there is no scientific evidence to support this. It’s only dressed-up conjecture.

Meanwhile, the House Common Education Committee will soon hear Kern’s Religious Viewpoints Act. Kern’s bill will allow students to freely express their religious beliefs at school and in assignments without penalty. Kern, an Oklahoma City Republican, is known nationally for her inflammatory and disparaging remarks about gay people. State Rep. Mike Reynolds, another Oklahoma City Republican, is also listed as a sponsor of the measure.

(Update: Kern's bill passed through the committee and will now be considered by the full House, which is expected to approve it.)