Religious bills in OK legislature

Vic Hutchison reports:

[The first bill introduced in the current session of the OK Legislature was HB 1001, the same 'Religious Viewpoints Antidiscrimination Act' vetoed by Governor Henry last session. This bill was discussed on an earlier post. For a complete analysis of this unconstitutional legislation view the item 'Analysis of HB 1001' in the left column of the OESE web site.

Also Senate Joint Resolution 8 was discussed earlier. This is another unconstitutional item that would place religious prayers into many aspects of public schools, but would require a vote of the people to change the Oklahoma Constitution which now has a very strong statement supporting church/state separation.

Now Senate Bill 320 ("Scientific Education and Academic Freedom Act") was the first bill of this type filed this year in the U.S. It is essentially the same as the one in Louisiana that was signed into law there last year. This is continuation of a national movement of creationists to insert religion into science courses. As pointed out earlier by many scientific organizations this is just another attempt to place religion into public schools. It directly mentions evolution, climate warming, cloning, etc. as items where 'strengths and weaknesses' are to be covered; these are simply code buzz words used to attack science.

From Vic's OKLAHOMA EVOLUTION LIST SERVE newsletter of January 9th. OESE is Oklahomans for Excellence in Science Education.

The 2009 session of the Oklahoma legislature opens February 2nd.