State legislatures again! This time it’s the Colorado House
of Representatives (they’ve got Gordon Klingenschmitt,
too), where Stephen Humphrey has been representing District 48 since 2013.
Promptly after having been elected, Humphrey submitted House Bill 13-1089,
an “Academic Freedom Act” for both K-12 public schools and institutes of higher education in the state of
Colorado. Academic Freedom Acts are of course attempts to protect teaching
creationism in public school classrooms, often padded with protections of other
types of pseudoscience and denialism as well, usually modeled after the example
of the Discovery Institute’s Model academic freedom statute on evolution.
It has nothing to do with academic freedom, but “protecting academic freedom”
sounds better than the more accurate “trying to get religion back into
classrooms and removing scientific facts that fundamentalists find threatening
to what they wish were true”.
Humphrey’s bill in particular would “direct teachers to create an environment
that encourages students to intelligently and respectfully explore scientific questions
and learn about scientific evidence related to biological and chemical
evolution, global warming, and human cloning.” The bill also referred to
those as “controversial issues”, where
“controversial issues” means “issues where Humphrey doesn’t like the consensus
position among scientists.” There is no scientific controversy over evolution
or global warming. So, not only is Humphrey a creationist and global warming
denialist; he also wants Colorado to ensure that his politically and
religiously motivated denialism is what is taught in schools. According to Humphrey,
his intention was not to add religious dogma to the curriculum, but his
intention was, of course, precisely to add religious dogma to the curriculum.
Even the most baldfaced lie is apparently acceptable as long as you do it for
Jesus.
The cosponsors of the bill were Perry Buck (R-District 49),
Justin Everett (R-District 22), Chris Holbert (R-District 44), Janak Joshi (R-District 16), Dan Nordberg
(R-District 14), Lori Saine (R-District 63), and James D. Wilson (R-District
60), so you know who not to vote for if you have a vote in Colorado. The bill
was apparently also introduced in the senate, where the sponsors were Scott Renfroe (R-District 13), an anti-gay activist and card-carrying member of ALEC,
an organization devoted to this kind of legislation; Kevin Grantham (R-District 2); Ted Harvey (R-District 30); and Owen Hill (R-District 10).
The bill died in committee, as expected,
but Humphrey is still in the Colorado House, and he is surely up to no good.
Last time Colorado saw a creationist bill was apparently in
2010, when state senator Dave Schultheis submitted his creationism andtheocracy bill (not Schultheis’s title).
Diagnosis: Another Taliban representative in a State
legislature. He shouldn’t be there. Get him out.
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