Topeka ? It’s being dubbed Scopes II and Evopalooza.

There are concerns that Kansas again will be the butt of late-night comedians.

The national media are parachuting in.

Opposing sides are setting up information booths, lining up experts, scheduling press conferences and zipping alerts and documents through cyberspace.

But for Kansas, it’s just another battle in the culture war.

Hearings set to start Thursday on biological evolution are the result of an ongoing political revolution on the State Board of Education.

For years, the 10-member board received little attention, tending to a public school system of 450,000 students in 301 districts across the state.

But starting in the late 1990s, the board became the battleground between social conservatives and moderates.

In 1999, when science standards were being written, a conservative majority on the board opted for standards that de-emphasized evolution.

When the vote was made, then-Gov. Bill Graves issued a one-sentence statement that said: “This is a terrible, tragic, embarrassing solution to a problem that did not exist.”

The anti-evolution decision hit a raw nerve in public discourse, deciding elections, defining candidates and destroying political careers. Kansas was ridiculed on late-night television, and the actions of the board were compared with the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, in which a teacher in Tennessee was found guilty of violating state law by teaching evolution in the classroom.

The Science Standards Hearings 6News video: Possible revision of science standards creating uproar Scientists: Board of education can’t determine evolution issue Evolution defender won’t call witnesses (05-03-05) Lifelong love of biology fuels KU professor’s commitment to science (05-01-05) Attorney’s personal questions led to doubts about evolution (05-01-05) Board member admits doubts about evolution (04-23-05) Evolution puts state in spotlight (04-22-05) 6News video: Evolution supporters gather to discuss evolution (04-21-05) Details set for debate on science standards (04-20-05) Evolution’s front line: Conflicts play out in classroom (04-17-05) Lawrence forum seeks to reshape evolution debate (04-17-05) Taxpayers to pay tab for debates (04-17-05) National group won’t take part in evolution hearings (4-15-05) BOE hears debate on science curriculum (04-14-05) Evolution hearings could be one-sided (04-09-05)

In 2000, moderates in Kansas took back three seats in elections that were reported around the world. The newly seated board put evolution back in the standards, and all was quiet for a while.

Conservatives recapture board

But without a major issue before the board, conservatives quietly recaptured control in the next two election cycles, hitting social buttons with the electorate. In one campaign, an incumbent moderate Republican was said to be aligned with an atheist organization. In another, the conservative winner said she wanted to prohibit the children of illegal aliens from attending public school despite a U.S. Supreme Court decision that states the children must be educated.

This year, with science standards being updated by a 25-member committee of scientists and instructors, the new conservative majority on the board blessed a minority report from the standards committee that criticizes the foundation of evolution.

The hearings starting Thursday will be conducted by three of the six-member conservative majority on the State Board of Education.

The hearings will feature numerous witnesses who will testify to the inadequacy of evolution theory. The witnesses and writers of the minority report are backed by leading proponents of an idea that is called intelligent design. Intelligent design says that there is a master planner behind the origins of life.

Pro-evolution scientists have boycotted the hearings, saying they refuse to be drawn into a debate over intelligent design, which they consider a philosophy or religion and not a scientific theory that can be tested.

But the scientists will set up an information booth outside the hearings to contradict the hearing testimony.

News organizations will broadcast coverage worldwide, which has raised the concern of some that Kansas will again be depicted as a hayseed state.

“I never like to see Kansas have a black eye in any way,” Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said.

She said the board needed to adopt science standards that would give students the opportunity to do well on standardized tests “and not jeopardize the opportunity for Kansas kids to compete.”