Creationism

Ever since John McCain named Sarah Palin as his running mate, the central question has been “Who is Sarah Palin?”  The fact of that matter is that nobody really seems to know, especially Palin herself.

When the announcement came down, politicos of every stripe began scrambling to examine her thin record in an attempt to figure out just what McCain thought that she could bring to the ticket beyond crass electoral benefits.    Everyone, that is, except the Religious Right, which hailed the decision with a staggeringly over-the-top fervor considering that McCain had just named a one-term, relative unknown to fill out his ticket.

But as more becomes known about Palin, it is becoming increasingly clear just why the Right was so overjoyed.

Her militant opposition to abortion, going so far as to even refuse to support her own mother-in-law’s candidacy for Mayor because she was pro-choice; her efforts to oppose equality for gays and lesbians; her apparent affiliation with the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party; her support for teaching Intelligent Design; her reported efforts to censor library books and fire the town librarian – on and on it goes, with new details seemingly emerging by the hour, all suggesting that Palin is indeed the dream candidate the Right has been praying for.

Lost in all of this is Palin’s apparent willingness to utilize right-wing wedge issues when they suit her political needs and then downplay them when they don’t.

As John Stein, whom Palin defeated to become mayor of Wasilla, Alaska in 1996, recently told KCAW, Palin worked to inject the issue of abortion into the traditionally non-partisan mayor’s race and helped her pave the way for her own political aspirations: “The fundamental Christian values were very much a part of her background and the election, interestingly enough, tended to turn around the abortion issue.  John Stein: pro-choice.  Sarah Palin: anti-abortion.  That was heavily promoted by local, state, and I think even national anti-choice groups.”

When she ran for Governor in 2006, Palin was only one of two candidate to respond to the Eagle Forum of Alaska’s Questionnaire – a questionnaire that the organization is now trying to hide by taking it off of their website – in which she explained her opposition to abortion, providing benefits to same-sex couples, to sex-ed and contraception distribution in schools, to hate crimes legislation, and declaring that “Preserving the definition of ‘marriage’ as defined in our constitution” would be among her top priorities if elected.

So while Palin is clearly willing to exploit wedge issues when they serve her needs, she seems to prefer to do so on the down-low and somewhat away from the public eye.  When her opponent for Governor in 2006 tried to make an issue of her staunch anti-abortion views, Palin dismissed the issue, saying “I think it's a shame ... that anyone would try to make this issue a headline, banner issue in the campaign when it's not” and saying that she wouldn’t push for state constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion because “there is no law that I could sign in office that could ever supersede the Supreme Court's ruling.”  While standing by her militant views, she insisted that "I am not one to be out there preaching and forcing my views on anyone else."

When she was criticized for her views that creationism should be taught in science class, she backed off, saying that she wouldn’t "have religion as a litmus test, or anybody's personal opinion on evolution or creationism" for members of the state school board.

In fact, it seems that when ever anyone tried to actually pin Palin down on her right-wing positions, her response was to dismiss the efforts as divisive and hypothetical:

A significant part of Palin’s base of support lies among social and Christian conservatives. Her positions on social issues emerged slowly during the campaign: on abortion (should be banned for anything other than saving the life of the mother), stem cell research (opposed), physician-assisted suicide (opposed), creationism (should be discussed in schools), state health benefits for same-sex partners (opposed, and supports a constitutional amendment to bar them).

Palin and her staff complained that efforts to raise these issues in public were divisive and hypothetical. The normally unflappable candidate seemed put-upon when she faced a string of such questions in the last debate, on public television and radio Thursday night.

“It’s interesting that so many questions do resolve around that centeredness that I have,” she said with a half-smile.

…

Palin said her reading of the Bible would not “bleed over into policy.”

In fact, Time Magazine suggests that central operating principle of Palin’s political career is the willingness to adopt a “new political identity” that suits her needs at any given moment:

By the time Sarah Palin was entering state politics, the hottest issue in Alaska wasn't gay marriage or even abortion. It was corruption and cronyism. … She needed a new political identity to make it to the next level, so ethics reform became her calling card. "She's a very savvy politician," says Halcro. "So wedge issues were not part of the portfolio."

"If anything," he says, "she got tired of answering questions about them." Halcro recalls one debate in October 2006 in which, after repeated questions about her opposition to abortion even in cases of rape or incest, she looked at the moderator with exasperation and asked if they were going to talk about anything besides abortion. It was detracting from her new message: cleaning up the capitol.

…

In the end, her political journey from banner-waving GOP social conservative to maverick reformer may simply be about good timing. It's what former journalist Bill McAllister, who now works for Palin's press staff, used to call "Sarah-dipity" — that uncanny gift of knowing exactly what voters are looking for at a particular moment. And, of course, the political will to give them what they want.

This ploy might have worked on the state-level, but Palin is now in the national spotlight and her “I’m-a-right-winger/I’m-a-moderate-independent-maverick” shtick is no longer going to fly.

While the McCain campaign is obviously pushing the narrative that Palin is a “co-maverick”, the GOP’s right-wing base is screaming that she is their dream come true and, it goes without saying, that both of those things cannot be true.  And considering that Palin had been scheduled to be honored by Phyllis Schlafly and Republican National Coalition for Life today at the convention but cancelled at the last minute, it looks like the McCain campaign hasn’t quite been able to figure out which way it wants to go.

The rise in popularity of the online, collaborative reference Wikipedia has posed a challenge to librarians and teachers who are trying to teach rigorous research methods to high school students. But while these educators have directed their students to use more traditional sources or, at least, to read Wikipedia with skepticism, one teacher decided the solution was to let his students write their own encyclopedia.

That teacher was Andy Schlafly—son of the famous culture warrior Phyllis Schlafly—the class was a group of home-school students, and the result, Conservapedia, immediately become the Internet equivalent of a laughingstock. The problem according to Schlafly was not Wikipedia’s fundamental unreliability—by design, there is no authoritative editing and factual inaccuracies may creep in despite a vigilant volunteer base—but its supposed bias against America and Christianity. Thus, Conservapedia’s obsession with right-wing politics, evolution, and homosexuality.

In spite of the ridicule, Schlafly and his young followers soldiered on, and they are still at it today. Eagle Forum just released a video promoting Conservapedia as an affirming alternative to the Wikipedia world:

STUDENT: They have an article about evolution, and when conservative or Christian editors tried to add information to that about the other side of the argument and the argument for creationism or Intelligent Design, it was censored or taken out of there.

SCHLAFLY: On Conservapedia, you’re going to get the other side of that. You’re going to get evidence against evolution. Same thing for homosexuality. We bring in all the health harm that’s caused by homosexuality, all the biblical quotes against it—you get that on Conservapedia. You’re not going to get that sort of fair treatment on the Wikipedia entries.

“I don’t have to live with what’s printed in the newspaper. I don’t have to take what’s written in Wikipedia,” said Schlafly. “We’ve got our own way to express knowledge.” Whether it’s the use of “A.D.” instead of “A.C.E.” to mark dates, or anti-gay propaganda instead of science, Schlafly’s “way of knowing” offers the Religious Right familiarity, and a respite from the oppressive world of newspapers and reference works. Or, as Stephen Colbert termed it, their own Wikiality.

Phyllis Schlafly has been a towering figure on the Right for more than four decades: inspiring Barry Goldwater’s foot soldiers with “A Choice Not an Echo,” founding the Eagle Forum and leading the fight against the Equal Rights Amendment, and continuing to rail against supposedly “activist” judges standing in the way of her agenda.

“Liberals in this country know that they don’t have the hearts of the American people…so their game plan is to take their issues to the courts,” said Schlafly at the Conservative Political Action Conference, repeating a theme she’s been talking up for years. What was new this time was that she brought her son, Andy.

Andy Schlafly, general counsel for the American Association of Physicians and Surgeons, may seem like an unlikely candidate to be a right-wing spokesman—even if, as his mother felt the need to say, he attended Harvard Law School. But the AAPS is hardly just a boring professional society; it’s a far-right splinter from the American Medical Association dedicated to opposing abortion and government-funded health care. And Andy Schlafly has already made a name for himself on the Internet, first as a defender of creationism on a USENET discussion group and then as an instructor of right-wing politics for Eagle Forum University.

But what really made Andy Schlafly an electronic celebrity was his quixotic fight against Wikipedia, the user-compiled online encyclopedia. Decrying Wikipedia’s “liberal bias,” Schlafly founded Conservapedia, which quickly became a laughingstock for its bizarre agenda and shoddy execution on subjects such as animal origins, homosexuality, and basic facts.

Mr. Schlafly believes that the judiciary, like Wikipedia, has a liberal bias. He called upon the CPAC crowd to pressure John McCain on the issue, to make “sure we’re not fooled by the next Supreme Court nominee.” McCain, of course, promised to nominate judges like Roberts and Alito, but “that’s not good enough,” according to Schlafly, who called on McCain to set up a right-wing panel to select candidates for the judiciary and get assurance on their far-right bona fides. “[We] don’t want judges who say it’s unconstitutional for a teacher to lead class in prayer,” said Schlafly—but most importantly, “[we’re] looking for the fifth vote to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

Ultimately, Schlafly was pessimistic about the chances for more right-wing nominees in the next few years—but he had a plan: court-stripping. Merely by writing into legislation a clause taking away the court’s jurisdiction, Schlafly asserted, Congress can keep the federal courts (and Americans’ basic rights, apparently) “under its thumb.”

Schlafly said court-stripping would be “essential to the life issue,” complaining that judges have a habit of delaying the enforcement of newly passed abortion restrictions—ones that push the boundaries of reproductive law—while the legality of such laws is being considered. Schlafly encouraged lawmakers to include in such legislation a provision telling courts to take a hike.

When a child is misbehaving with a toy, Schlafly said, “You take the toy away from the child. When the court is abusing its authority, you take that authority away.”

Of course, the judicial branch is not a child, and Congress is not its parent. Simply editing checks and balances out of the picture—like Conservapedia’s creative rewrite of a “biased” democratic encyclopedia—does not actually change reality.

As we noted earlier this month, Ben Stein—of Richard Nixon and “Ferris Bueller” fame—is starring in an anti-evolution documentary called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” While the movie isn’t set to be released until February, scientists are already accusing its producers of dishonesty—and not for claiming that “Intelligent Design” creationism is a valid scientific theory. As various outlets are reporting, several scientists well known for refuting anti-evolution activists say the producers for the film hid their agenda, portraying the project innocently as “Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion” (still listed on the web site of the supposed production company).

From the New York Times:

If he had known the film’s premise, Dr. Dawkins said in an e-mail message, he would never have appeared in it. “At no time was I given the slightest clue that these people were a creationist front,” he said.

Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist who heads the National Center for Science Education, said she agreed to be filmed after receiving what she described as a deceptive invitation.

“I have certainly been taped by people and appeared in productions where people’s views are different than mine, and that’s fine,” Dr. Scott said, adding that she would have appeared in the film anyway. “I just expect people to be honest with me, and they weren’t.” …

Walt Ruloff, a producer and partner in Premise Media [producer of “Expelled”], also denied that there was any deception. Mr. Ruloff said in a telephone interview that Rampant Films [which approached the scientists as producers of “Crossroads”] was a Premise subsidiary, and that the movie’s title was changed on the advice of marketing experts, something he said was routine in filmmaking. …

Another scientist who was, P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota, Morris, said the film’s producers had misrepresented its purpose, but said he would have agreed to an interview anyway. But, he said in a posting on The Panda’s Thumb Web site, he would have made a “more aggressive” attack on the claims of the movie.

As for Stein, who rails in the movie against the scientific establishment’s supposed unsavory suppression of creationism, he claims innocence, adding that if he had his druthers, the movie would be called “From Darwin to Hitler”—an homage, perhaps, to the late televangelist D. James Kennedy.

In his latest column, Chuck Norris launches into a familiar gripe of the Right, warning parents that college campuses today into hotbeds of “liberal bias” and “indoctrination.” One example employed by the Right is the recent failure of an Iowa State professor to be granted tenure, supposedly due to his advocacy of “Intelligent Design” creationism. (That’s leaving aside a more obvious explanation: Perhaps if he spent more time on astronomy than creationism, he would have been able to bring in more outside grant money.)

It seems at least one creationist is fighting back – and apparently threatening to use Chuck Norris methods.

An anti-evolution activist who has been targeting biology professors at the University of Colorado at Boulder is implicated in distributing threatening letters two weeks ago, calling teachers of evolution “child molesters” and “terrorists” and repeating the line “every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society”:

Last weekend more than a dozen envelopes bearing the image of skull and crossbones and containing letters threatening the lives of CU-Boulder evolutionary biology professors were slipped under the doors of CU-Boulder buildings. …

“EBIO (evolutionary biology) professors are terrorists against America and … intellectual and spiritual child abusers of their young and impressionable students … the EBIO department not only blasphemes God, who is invisible, but it blasphemes His Only Begotten Son and our Messiah, Jesus Christ, which is more unforgivable … for all these reason all God-fearing and Truth-loving persons must say, They must go!”

The evolution blog Panda’s Thumb has more information, including excerpts from the letters.

No plans for Memorial Day? The Creation Museum, a $27 million production of Answers in Genesis, is finally opening in northern Kentucky. From the New York Times:

The entrance gates here are topped with metallic Stegosauruses. The grounds include a giant tyrannosaur standing amid the trees, and a stone-lined lobby sports varied sauropods. It could be like any other natural history museum, luring families with the promise of immense fossils and dinosaur adventures.

But step a little farther into the entrance hall, and you come upon a pastoral scene undreamt of by any natural history museum. Two prehistoric children play near a burbling waterfall, thoroughly at home in the natural world. Dinosaurs cavort nearby, their animatronic mechanisms turning them into alluring companions, their gaping mouths seeming not threatening, but almost welcoming, as an Apatosaurus munches on leaves a few yards away. …

[The scene] serves as a vivid introduction to the sheer weirdness and daring of this museum created by the Answers in Genesis ministry that combines displays of extraordinary nautilus shell fossils and biblical tableaus, celebrations of natural wonders and allusions to human sin. Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel.

Last year, Answers in Genesis complained that a museum tour of “Lucy,” the remains of a 3-million-year-old human ancestor, was “anti-creationist hype.” The group’s own museum will also feature fossils, but presented as cohabitants of the world of Noah and passengers on his ark.

Oddly enough, the American Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., is opening its own new exhibit on Saturday.  But the museum maintains that the subjects of the “Mythic Creatures: Dragons, Unicorns, and Mermaids” exhibit “are found only in folktales and other stories.”    

“[T]he cultural battle has gone international," declared Allan Carlson, president of the Illinois-based Howard Center for Family, Religion, and Society. "The American religious right, instead of being isolationist, has in fact gone global." Indeed, representatives from leading far-right groups – including American Family Association, Concerned Women For America, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, the Heritage Foundation and the Discovery Institute (advocate of “Intelligent Design” creationism) – are taking a field trip to Poland this weekend for the Howard Center’s fourth World Congress of Families.

The conference is centered around a “manifesto” co-authored by Carlson outlining his model of “the natural family,” described by Salon.com as a combination of encouraging mothers to stay at home and have many children and fervent opposition to gays and abortion:

"It is not enough to stop public recognition of 'gay marriage,' nor to oppose 'safe sex education' in the public schools, nor to ban partial birth abortion, nor to create optional 'covenant' marriages," it reads. "Victory for the natural family will come only as we change the terms of debate."

Joining the jet-setting religious-right activists is Assistant Secretary of State Ellen Sauerbrey, and as we noted, members of the European parliament are not happy with this apparent “official U.S. government stamp of approval [on the] extremist and intolerant views” likely to come together in the conference as it battles “the secularists” (in the Howard Center’s words) and a conspiracy of world governments (as a papal representative warned at a previous Congress of Families) that are pushing the continent to a “demographic winter.” "If Europe succumbs to the modern, post-family, secular worldview completely, it's like losing a great ally in a global contest," warned Carlson.

The Right has also found a new hero in the conservative Polish government, which recently proposed firing teachers accused of promoting “homosexual culture” in schools. The Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute is circulating a petition in advance of the conference commending Poland’s fight against the “radical homosexual movement.” Poland’s president will be speaking at the World Congress of Families.

The pro-choice website RH Reality Check will be covering the conference from Poland; you can find their posts here.

When Florida televangelist D. James Kennedy asked his viewers to donate towards the production of a TV special on the “harmful effects” of evolution – “everything from the Nazi death camps and attempts to create a super-race to the modern push in many nations for euthanasia” – he warned that “The other side has the entire public school system of America as its platform,” whereas he came armed with only “the national network of television outlets that God has given to us.” While it’s true that most high school science classes stick to scientific curricula on evolution and stay clear of attempts to equate Charles Darwin with Adolph Hitler, the Religious Right’s campaign against the teaching of evolution has its share of recruits across the nation.

After less than two weeks on the job, part-time biology teacher Kris Helphinstine was fired by the Sisters, Oregon school board for drawing his course materials from a far-right creationist website. Echoing Kennedy, Helphinstine’s attempt to “get kids thinking” involved a PowerPoint presentation linking evolutionary science to Planned Parenthood and Nazi Germany. From The Oregonian:

Helphinstine said in retrospect slides of Nazi death camps weren't appropriate for his freshman and sophomore students.

And given a second chance, he said he wouldn't introduce arguments from Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, a group building a Creation Museum in Cincinnati dedicated to teaching a Bible-centric view of natural history.

Answers in Genesis is a straightforward advocate of young-earth creationism; the group is building a Creation Museum in northern Kentucky apparently set to open this summer. The group provides quite a few classroom resources for teaching creationism.

This material was apparently the focus of the teacher’s entire tenure at the school:

One parent, John Rahm, said his daughter reported that only "one day of 10" was devoted to the study of evolution, with the rest devoted to devoted to "Intelligent Design" materials.

"The test as well was 90-plus percent ID material," Rahm said.

It could be a coincidence, but Helphinstine, 27, began his new job only a couple weeks after a right-wing conference convened near Portland, around two hours away. Among the presentations at the 2nd Annual Restore America Conference was “Session for teachers, parents and students” on “Upholding a Christian Worldview in Education.” The speaker was Stephen Williams of Prepare the Way Ministries, based in nearby Bend, which is dedicated to “empower[ing] Christians … to uphold a biblical worldview in our schools and society.” Williams is known for suing the school where he taught fifth grade over his use of “supplemental materials” meant to emphasize the idea of America as a Christian nation.