Texas Evolves, Ousts Creationist from Ed Board Chair

by Clay Burell · 2009-06-01 08:44:00 UTC
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Steve Schafersman of the Texas Freedom Network spreads the Good News:

On Thursday the Texas Senate failed to confirm Don McLeroy as Chairman of the Texas State Board of Education. Rejection of a governor's nomination is rare. McLeroy lost confirmation in a close party-line 19-11 vote. One Democratic senator, Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr. was present but abstained. A two-thirds majority (21 votes among the 31 senators) was needed for confirmation. McLeroy will remain on the SBOE as a member.

News reports about this topic can be found in the Houston Chronicle, Austin American-Statesman, the Dallas Morning News, and San Antonio Express-News.

As is widely known, Don McLeroy, a Bryan Republican, is a Young Earth Creationist who believes the Earth is 6,000 years old, that the Earth and the entire universe were created in six 24-hour days, and that all species were specially created in their present form by God. Organisms now represented by fossils were all killed and deposited in sediments of Noah's Flood.

But don't shout "Amen" yet. The Devil, Schafersman adds, is in these details, which may damn Texas to a McLeroy clone for two more years:

Since McLeroy's nomination was unconfirmed, after June 1 the SBOE will have no chair and Governor Rick Perry will be obliged to appoint a new chair. The next confirmation hearing for SBOE Chair will be in two years, so if Gov. Perry appoints Radical Religious Right and Young Earth Creationist Cynthia Dunbar, Terri Leo, David Bradley, Ken Mercer, Barbara Cargill, or Gail Lowe to be the next SBOE chair, he or she will be able to serve for at least two years before facing Senate confirmation.

Schafersman thinks the governor will indeed appoint another creationist for the interim.

Anyway, kudos to Texas' Democratic senators, all of whom voted against McLeroy, and a big *sigh* to the Republicans who all voted for him. A special thanks to Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston, who already received over 1,500 "Thank You's" from our petition here on Change.org for standing, ahem, upright against the primates fossilized in pre-scientific worldviews.

I don't know why the idea that we're animals is so terrifying. We're the only animal able to unriddle the great mysteries of life - the genome, the tree of life (lower case, mind you), the wonder of Google, and so much more. Sure, we're also historically the most destructive animal the world has ever seen, but that's been true before science as well as after it.

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Bonus video: Here's the good dentist McLeroy setting the scientific "experts" straight in the Texas science standards hearings at the State BoE:
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Clay Burell
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