In Pennsylvania:
All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania school board that had been sued for introducing the teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to evolution in biology class were swept out of office yesterday by a slate of challengers who campaigned against the intelligent design policy.
Among the losing incumbents on the Dover, Pa., board were two members who testified in favor of the intelligent design policy at a recently concluded federal trial on the Dover policy: the chairwoman, Sheila Harkins, and Alan Bonsell.
The election results were a repudiation of the first school district in the nation to order the introduction of intelligent design in a science class curriculum.
In Kansas:
The fiercely split Kansas Board of Education voted 6 to 4 on Tuesday to adopt new science standards that are the most far-reaching in the nation in challenging Darwin's theory of evolution in the classroom.
The standards move beyond the broad mandate for critical analysis of evolution that four other states [not Texas, happily] have established in recent years, by recommending that schools teach specific points that doubters of evolution use to undermine its primacy in science education.
Among the most controversial changes was a redefinition of science itself, so that it would not be explicitly limited to natural explanations.
And in Texas:
Voters tied the knot Tuesday with a constitutional amendment cementing marriage in Texas as being solely between a man and a woman and barring communities from legalizing same-sex unions.
With close to one in five voters turning out, Proposition 2 won approval by about a three-to-one ratio. Travis County [ed.-where Austin is located], home to a leading anti-amendment group, appeared to be the only county where passage wasn't assured, according to incomplete returns.
The Lone Star State becomes the 19th state in which voters have inserted a marriage definition into their state constitution. The amendment landed on the ballot after being approved by a two-thirds ratio in both the Texas House and the Senate in the spring.
Fourteen of those other states have added gay marriage bans since last year, with anywhere from 57 percent to 78 percent approval, in the wake of court and legislative actions in some states — including Vermont, Massachusetts and California — permitting gay couples to receive legal recognition of their pairings.
"That's overwhelming," said the amendment's author, Rep. Warren Chisum, R-Pampa. "We could have gone home and sat down and still won," he said as he watched election returns with about 100 Propposition 2 supporters at Great Hills Baptist Church in Austin.
Let us recall that Rep. Chisum, a stalwart water boy for fascist theocracy, was aptly pegged by Rep. Thompson of Houston earlier this year:
"This amendment [banning gay marriage] is blowing smoke to fuel the hell-fire flames of bigotry," said Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston.
Thompson, 66, an African-American who grew up with segregation, said the legislation reminded her of the time when interracial marriages were illegal.
"When people of my color used to marry someone of Mr. Chisum's color (white), you'd often find people of my color hanging from a tree. That's what white people back then did to protect marriage," Thompson said.
And that's the state of democracy in America in the year 2005.
UPDATE: More on mindless bigotry here.
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