Stardate 20020124.1514

(On Screen): Templeton writes in with this delicious bill introduced in Washington State. It has been "referred to the Committee on Education" and it will be buried there.

By an amazing feat of linguistic gymnastics, it proves that the teaching of evolution in the schools is unconstitutional.

Actually, it does that by citing the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. Washington State Senator Hochstatter, the bill's sponsor, should know better.

As important as those two documents are, neither of them has any Constitutional significance. History generally dates the beginning of the United States to July 4, 1776, the date when the Declaration of Independence was signed. I myself date the beginning of the US to 1787 when the Constitution was ratified, and that's also legally the case. The legal significance of the Declaration of Independence is negative: it signals the end of British sovereignty over our territory. But it doesn't positively create anything, and it cannot be cited in court as a basis for law.

By the same token, the preamble to the Constitution is a statement of philosophy, but it too is not the basis for law.

But even if they were, the Constitution itself contains an amendment process whereby constitutional principles can be revised, and by definition if an amendment contradicts anything in previous constitutional law, then the amendment takes precedence (unless it is itself superseded by a later amendment). The basic Constitution, for example, authorizes slavery, but that was overridden by the 13th amendment. The Constitution says that US senators will be selected by the legislatures of the states; the 17th amendment changed that so that senators are directly elected. The Constitution says that only male citizens over the age of 21 can vote; that was changed by the 19th and 26th amendments so that any adult citizen over the age of 18 can vote.

And by the same token, even if the basic Constitution did somehow include a statement of a deity, that was overridden by the First Amendment which banned any establishment of a religion by the US. With the passage of the First Amendment, the US government became a secular agency whether it had been before or not.

And because of the "supremacy clause" (in Article VI of the Constitution) this is also binding on the states, including the State of Washington.

State Senator Hochstatter may be a fool, but his fellow legislators are not, and this bill will never see the light of day. But even if it passed, it would be struck down in the courts. One has to wonder why he bothered.