And is the whole haystack blowing past next?
In “California Science Center Pays $110,000 to Settle Intelligent Design Discrimination Lawsuit” (Evolution News & Views, August 29, 2011), we learn:
The state-run California Science Center (CSC) has paid $110,000 to settle a lawsuit by American Freedom Alliance (AFA) against CSC for violating AFA’s First Amendment free speech rights to advocate intelligent design (ID). As part of the settlement, the CSC also has invited AFA to present the ID event it previously cancelled.
CSC rented its IMAX theater to AFA to show Darwin’s Dilemma, a science documentary advocating ID. However, when CSC learned the film would portray ID favorably, CSC cancelled AFA’s event.
Darwin’s Dilemma features the problem that the Cambrian Explosion has always posed for Darwinism. American Freedom Alliance is, according to its Website, “a non-political, non-aligned movement which promotes, defends and upholds Western values and ideals.”
AFA filed suit in California Superior Court alleging viewpoint discrimination and breach of contract.
Note that this was their lawsuit, not Discovery Institute’s. DI’s policy analyst Casey Luskin considers it a victory for the First Amendment to the US Constitution:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech , or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
The issue here, according to Luskin was that
… evidence disclosed in this case shows the CSC, Smithsonian Institution, and LA County Museum of Natural History attempted to stifle dissent from Darwinism. The result was illegal state-sponsored suppression of protected speech.
But then, the Smithsonian was the famed institution where Walcott basically did nothing for decades about the Canadian evidence from the Cambrian evolution that showed that Darwinism is wrong. Figures they’d rise from their leather-bottomed chairs to try to suppress a film that shows the public the knowledge that the science czars were depriving us of.
This may signal a change in the wind: It’s a far cry from 2005, when the Smithsonian arbitrarily cancelled a showing of Privileged Planet, most likely because the New York Times falsely reported that it was anti-evolution. With no penalty to anyone except the filmmaker and the sponsors. But this time, it has cost the czars of science something to behave as if they are above the law.
But a number of straws have been blowing past lately:
2010: University of Kentucky must pay $125, 000 damages to astronomer Martin Gaskell, after passing him over for a promotion, despite excellent work, due essentially to meddling by the Darwin lobby.
2011: Philosophy journal apologizes re philosophers who were misrepresented in its pages by the Darwin lobby, runs a rebuttal.
2011: The math journal that dumped UD author Granville Sewell’s accepted article because a Darwinist blogger complained had to apologize and pay damages.
2011 Barry Arrington of Uncommon Descent negotiates an apology from a Darwinist prof who humiliated a doubting University of Colorado student (other terms confidential)
Now this.
Darwin’s dilemma indeed. It doesn’t look so good anymore to be one of Darwin’s Rottweilers. In fact, the Darwin lobby are becoming bad people to know. You could be held accountable, even if they are not.
Here’s the trailer for the film Darwinists will defy almost anything to stop you from seeing:
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