PRESS RELEASE
For Immediate Release
Contact: Nathan Bupp
Phone: (716) 636-4869 x 218
E-mail: nbupp@centerforinquiry.net
Senator Vitter Withdraws Creation-Science Appropriation Under Pressure
October 23, 2007
Amherst, New York (October 19, 2007)-Under pressure from The Center for Inquiry- Transnational , as well as 33 other pro-science, educational and civil-rights groups, Sen. David Vitter, R- Louisiana, withdrew a proposed $100,000 earmark Thursday that would have promoted the teaching of "creation science" in public school science classes alongside evolution. The appropriation, added to the Fiscal Year 2008 Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriation Bill's Committee Report (S. 1710), would have provided the funding to the creationist Louisiana Family Forum "to develop a plan to promote better science education."
"While the U.S. threatens to lag behind places like China and much of Europe in science education, it's gratifying that Senator Vitter has declined to further our decline and has withdrawn this misguided earmark," said David Koepsell, executive director of the Council for Secular Humanism at the Center for Inquiry. "The rest of the developed world knows that evolution by natural selection has 150 years of scientific confirmation, and must be taught to students as real science, while creationism is an untested and untestable hypothesis without any scientific confirmation. To be a first-class scientific power, we must teach first-class science, and not religiously motivated myths."
The Louisiana Family Forum's stated mission is "To persuasively present biblical principles in the centers of influence on issues affecting the family through research, communication and networking." Targeted centers of influence include government, media, law, medicine and academia. The group works to promote Bibles and prayer in public schools, to deny rights for non-traditional couples, and to advance statistically ineffective abstinence-only programs by informing teens of the "myths of ‘safe sex'."
Although the Louisiana Family Forum's tax-exempt status prevents political action, the group was instrumental in Vitter' 2004 election, with at least two members employed directly in his Senate campaign. The pro-family values group also publicly defended the married Vitter in the wake of his Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. call-girl scandals this summer.
The Center for Inquiry/Transnational, a nonprofit, educational, advocacy, and scientific-research think tank based in Amherst, New York, is also home to the Council for Secular Humanism, founded in 1980; the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (formerly CSICOP), founded in 1976; and the Commission for Scientific Medicine and Mental Health. The Center for Inquiry's research and educational projects focus on three broad areas: religion, ethics, and society; paranormal and fringe-science claims; and medicine and health. The Center's Web site is www.centerforinquiry.net .
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