The Kitzmiller vs. Dover trial continues, with the ACLU and its witnesses arguing that to briefly mention the theory of intelligent design just before spending several days teaching Darwinian evolution constitutes an establishment of religion and should not be allowed. There are some secularists, however, who take a very different view of the matter. Comments Dean Esmay, self-proclaimed liberal and atheist:
There are people right now in Dover, Pennsylvania fighting to ban a completely harmless book called Of Pandas And People from public school science classes, against the express wishes of a majority of the parents. Tap-dance around it all you want, that is an attempt to ban a book from the classroom and censor ideas. You can put all the lipstick you want on this pig, with armwaving generalizations about “separation of church and state,” but the pig won’t get any prettier. It is censorship that is being advocated here, period. It will belong right on the ALA’s Banned books list, alongside The Catcher in the Rye and Huckleberry Finn. If the Stalinist ACLU and the self-proclaimed “defenders of science” have their way, anyhow.
And if they do get their wish and manage to get the book banned, the message will be loud and clear once again: believers in evolution are intellectual tyrants, and science teachers are liars who hide ideas from their students.