The Skeptic News has an item about a drive to have Evolution declared “Only a Theory” in California.
http://www.skepticnews.com/articles/01/10/29/035204.shtml
They link to a Focus on the Family Article here:
What I am really interested in is that:
Just what did the 1981 ruling say? I would guess that even if it does say what they say it says, that it was overturned by the other cases in the Supreme Court.
www.antievolution.org lists a number of anti-evolution legislation/actions taken in the U.S. According to that site, it was actually Kelly Segraves who got the court order in 1981 (he claimed that the teaching of evolution infringed upon religious freedom). Nell Segraves apparently did petition the California Board of Education to give equal treatment to creationism and evolution in the classroom (under the guise of “neutrality”) back in 1963.
See also Segraves vs. California, BACKGROUND: Six Significant Court Decisions Regarding Evolution/Creation Issues (paragraph 2), and The Creation Science Research Center which claims to have sponsored the suit.
I have no problem with evolution being taught as theory, with all facts ever uncovered to support it. I do have a problem with “creationism” being taught as scientific theory, because it is not.
Mind experiment:
If I created a religion that claimed that 1 + 1 = 3, and got a sufficient amount of followers, could I get basic math taught as a “just a theory” too – all in the name of “freedom of religion”?
I’m sure there are LOTS of people out there who are annoyed by Creationists and would cough join my religion.
This is a neat little thought exercise; IMHO we should be open-minded enough to treat everything as theory, in that it’s open to being questioned (even the mathematics of 1+1), although in everyday terms, it may not be all that useful (“Well, sir, the item costs £4.99, you gave me a fiver so in theory the change should be a penny” is just going to get you laughed at), so in many cases we can be quite happy to assume that there are such things as facts, when somebody comes along with acceptable proof that 1 + 1 = 3, then we need to examine and test it.
So we should be quite happy to look at, then reject theories that don’t fit the presented facts, IMHO, creationism is one of these theories (or it would be if the creationists put forward any facts to speak of).
That’s a scary precedent to set. Is there any end to where that could go?
[QUOTE
Nell Segraves has twice taken on the Darwinists of California public education and won.
[/QUOTE]
Maybe it’s time for Nell to join the 21st century and start taking on NeoDarwinists (rather than advocates of the older form of the Theory)! 
Of course, Evolution is a fact and a theory, but 99.9% of all SDMB’ers know that.
Personally, I think that both Evolution and Creationism are bunk. The truth is that the universe was formed from divine semen dripping off a pair of stained underpants, and I want this truth to be the only theory - nay, fact! - taught in schools. Any other outcome is unacceptable, and infringes upon my religious freedom.
Does that make Monica Lewinsky Jesus? 
I think that these people who say they want evolution to be taught as ‘only a theory’ would say ‘only a hypothesis’, if they had two brain cells to rub together. That’s what they seem to mean, at least…
God and Santa Claus are equally real?
I can accept that.
i’d like to know if there is anyone out there that has read this post and actually supports the teaching of creationism over evolution. i would honestly like to talk to someone that thinks that the poor translation of a millenia old book written in the consonants of ancient hebrew should triumph over the scientific theory with evidence to support it.
sarky - welcome to the SDMB…try the search function for past debates on evolution just over the past couple months…more examples that you could have hoped for!
Thanks for the replies everyone. It looks to me that the court order mentioned will not quite do what the creationists want. But I bet that does not stop them.