[net.origins] Excerpt of article in which CSRC reps make scary statements

jeff@rtech.ARPA (Jeff Lichtman) (03/31/85)

	The March 22 issue of the Express (a local weekly magazine in
newspaper format) has an article by Alan Rifkin about state textbook
standards.  Mr.  Rifkin worked until recently as a copy editor at a
state textbook publishing firm.  In the article he talks about a
conversation he had with Nell and Kelly Segraves and Dr. Robert Kofahl,
who represent the Creation Science Research Center.  The Express has
given me permission to reproduce here the part of the article having to
do with this conversation.  Where the context isn't clear I will insert
my own comments in brackets [].

	"Not present at the fair fight [Bill Honig, California Superintendent
of Schools, jokingly called a conference on textbook standards, not specifically
devoted to creationist vs. evolutionist issues, 'a fair fight'] were
San Diego creationists Nell and Kelly Segraves (mother and son) and their
resident scientist Dr. Robert Kofahl.  The Segraves are something like Texas's
fundamentalist lobbyists, the Gablers, only not as powerful, largely because
California isn't Texas.  It was better here, Nell Segraves says, when Reagan
was governor and appointed a creation scientist to the Board of Education,
and in fact they're especially happy the day I visit them at their Creation
Science Research Center because the word is in that Reagan's re-election
landslide is secure.

	"Kofahl has authored a paperback called 'The Handy Dandy Evolution
Refuter,' and when I think about it he actually looks 'handy-dandy.'  He
wears a short-sleeved shirt and tells me, in a logical, somewhat astounded
delivery, that the Board of Education has insidiously 'worked *religion*
into schoolbooks.'  He waits for me to blink, and chuckles, 'I woke you up.'
His word trick here is that Darwin's rejection of divine intervention was
'philosophical,' and therfore unscientific, and therefore religious.
(Somehow before the hour is out I fall for it again.)  We spend more time,
though, discussing the First Amendment.  In Segraves v. Board of Education
- a second Scopes trial, it was dubbed - the plaintiffs argued the free
exercise clause of the First against California's 1978 Science Framework.
On June 12, 1981, the Superior Court upheld the framework but directed the
board to disseminate an anti-dogmatism policy, which the Segraves claim the
1984 framework violates, on page after page.  They mail long lists of
objections to Francie Alexander's office, which rarely acquiesces but
faithfully replies.  For both sides the process is expensive.

	"The Segraves consider their center's legal lobbying activities to be
the forerunner of all textbook pressure groups, and it bothers them that the
others have had more visible success.  'Like the Filipinos,' Nell Segraves
says, 'or even the Mexicans.  They even want the wars that we have fought
interpreted from their point of view.'

	"I ask Segraves if the American perspective of the Mexican-American
war is more correct.

	"'Right or wrong is immaterial,' she says.  'That's the way it was and
that's the way it still is.  You're teaching a historical perspective from the
time the war took place.  And if the Mexicans want their perspective they can
write their own book.'  (Actually, most critics of social studies texts argue
along the lines of Frances Fitzgerald, who found the books to be stalemated
into 'consensus documents' that said nothing.)

	"But Segraves has another example.  'The history books,' she tells me,
'present all slaveholders as absolute horrors.  Of course, slavery was a
terrible thing,' she remarks.  'But the slaves were not treated well after the
war either, and children don't get the overall perspective of why people did
this, or that everyone is not better off running around without a job.'

	"'And have they really done the blacks any good with this sort of
program?' Kofahl wants to know.  'They've turned a large part of the black
population into a bunch of crybabies who are being transferred to another
slavemaster: the state welfare system.'  Such social-program dollars
particularly concern them with regard to sex education.  'We insist,' Segraves
says, 'that if you teach sex education you have to bring in the laws of the
state.'  The law she has in mind is Contributing to the Delinquency of a
Minor; the center reminds the federal government that it cannot give money to
institutions that violate the law.  'That's how,' Segraves says, 'we cut off
the money to Planned Parenthood.'  She smiles to herself at some length.

	"Nell Segraves also smiles when she recalls her sparrings with Bill
Honig, how they used to 'argue up one side and down the other in the halls
of the Board of Education.'  Five hundred miles north, Honig is talking about
forming the 'biggest protest group of all,' and vowing to bring other states
into the coalition.  Segraves calls it a 'cartel.'  No, it's bigger than that,
what Honig and the rest of them are trying to do, the real dimensions of this
battle - and she consents to lay it out for me but is mainly surprised I need
to ask.  'What they're aiming for,' Segraves says, 'is a world government that
will accommodate itself to Eastern religions and communist Marxism.  They can't
persuade the American people to give up their form of government, but if you
educate a generation or two they'll give it up willingly.  And no' - and even
pitch enters her voice - 'we will not bend to atheistic, communistic regimes,
even though it may mean nuclear holocaust or death.  We're battling,' says the
forerunner of all the pressure groups, 'over the minds of the young.'"

		- END OF EXCERPT -

	Let me say that I find this point of view disgusting.  I won't go into
any greater detail on my feelings toward these people, because I don't want to
fill the net with strings of insults and obscenities.

	I think Segraves' comments as a representative of the CSRC show that
this organization is not just interested in promoting the creationist
viewpoint, but rather is a far-right political organization that lobbies
against sex education and tries to change the contents of children's history
books.

	I would like to hear from the creationists on this net.  What do you
think of the opinions expressed by Nell Segraves and Dr. Kofahl (apart
from their creationist stance, which isn't the main part of what I object to
in their statements, and with which I expect that you agree)?  It would settle
my mind to know that most creationists don't really believe that "right and
wrong are immaterial" with respect to what children learn about our history,
or that unemployed blacks today are no better off than were the slaves before
the civil war (excuse me, War Between the States), or that people who oppose
them are trying to condition the American people to accept communism, or that
nuclear war is a justifiable risk for obtaining their objectives.

	If Bill Honig is a communist then I'm the Queen of Sheba.
-- 
Jeff Lichtman at rtech (Relational Technology, Inc.)
aka Swazoo Koolak