ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 5, 1996 TAG: 9603050068
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NASHVILLE, TENN.
SOURCE: Associated Press
The state where John Scopes was tried and convicted in 1925 for teaching evolution again wants to restrict what students can be told about the origins of man.
The Tennessee Senate is considering legislation to fire any teacher who presents evolution as fact. The bill was expected to pass during Monday night's session but instead was sent back to committee for study of six proposed amendments.
The amendments included one that would have protected teachers who wanted to teach the Biblical theories of creation along with evolution. Another, passed on a voice vote, changed the wording to say a teacher ``could'' instead of ``shall'' be fired.
The bill had been expected to pass despite an attorney general's opinion that it violates the constitutional separation of church and state.
Republican Sen. Keith Jordan said he moved to send the bill back to the Education Committee in hopes of figuring out a way to make it constitutional.
``We cannot constitutionally tell what is to be taught, particularly when there are religious underpinnings,'' Jordan said.
Already this year, Tennessee senators have gone on record in favor of displaying the Ten Commandments in churches, schools, businesses and homes for 10 days in May, and against same-sex marriages.
``This is a trilogy that is making this state a comedy,'' said Sen. Steve Cohen, a Memphis Democrat.
The sponsor of the evolution bill is Sen. Tommy Burks, whose home district is 45 miles northwest of Dayton, site of the 1925 Scopes ``Monkey trial'' He said he introduced the bill because constituents told him evolution was being taught as fact in Tennessee schools. He won't say where.
The bill seems destined to pass the Senate and then the House without significant help from lobbyists. The conservative Eagle Forum has been the most vocal backer of the bill, which some lawmakers said is hard to oppose.
``You can't explain a no vote in a 15-second sound bite,'' said Rep. Eugene Davidson, who voted for the bill when it cleared the House Education Committee.
Gov. Don Sundquist, a Republican, has not said what he will do if the bill reaches his desk.
The bill is more lenient than the law under which Scopes, a substitute biology teacher, was convicted of teaching evolution and fined $100.
That law prohibited teaching ``any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach again that man has descended from a lower order of animals.''
Burks' bill doesn't ban the teaching of evolution as theory or promote the teaching of Biblical theories, but teachers say no one knows how the law might be interpreted.
``Teachers will be afraid to teach anything about evolution,'' so students will miss a portion of their basic science curriculum, said Wesley Roberts, an ecology teacher at Nashville's Hillwood High.
The Monkey Trial pitted two legal giants of the age against each other - Clarence Darrow, representing Scopes, and William Jennings Bryan. It also drew scorn: Newspaperman H.L. Mencken, who covered the trial, branded Tennessee a state of yokels.
Scopes' conviction was overturned on a technicality, but the law stayed on the books until it was repealed in 1967. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar Arkansas law a decade later.
Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned the new Tennessee bill as a move by the ``radical religious right to continue hammering away at the wall between church and state.''
Cohen, the lone opponent of the Ten Commandments resolution, agreed.
``God is great. Religion is great. It can be a great influence on people's lives,'' Cohen said. ``But government is not, especially when people want government to get involved in religion.''
LENGTH: Medium: 77 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Wesley Roberts, an ecology teacher at Nashville'sby CNBHillwood High, said he fears the bill would make teachers ``afraid
to teach anything about evolution.'' color.