To the editor:

As someone who has lived and paid taxes in Kansas for over 35 years and whose three children, all raised in a non-Christian tradition, have attended Kansas schools from kindergarten to college, I have been concerned with the efforts of the Kansas school board to bring back the teaching of creationism, now in its new reincarnation as “intelligent design,” in science courses in the state.

Citing a Pew Research Center poll, your recent editorial “Let It Rest” implies that since 64 percent Americans believed that both creationism and evolution should be taught, why fight about it?

In a long and hard-fought legal case, McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, in 1982, U.S. District Court Judge William R. Overton had, in fact, dealt with a similar issue and whether public opinion should have any bearing on how such cases are decided.

Rejecting the proposal that creationism should be given a “balanced treatment” along with evolution because “a significant majority of the American public thought creation science should be taught if evolution was taught,” Overton stated:

“The application and content of First Amendment principles are not determined by public opinion polls or by a majority vote. : No group, no matter how large or small, may use the organs of the government, of which the public schools are the most conspicuous and influential, to foist its religious beliefs on others.”

I am grateful that there are people like Judge Overton to protect us under our constitutional system of government.

Surendra Gupta,

Lawrence