And the frequency of the religion-based complaints.
Take the ACA. Secular, right?
But lots of people were citing NT--as you do unto the least of these, etc., etc.
How about immigration reform?
Lots of people cite the Tanakh/OT, in how Israel was to treat the stranger well.
Leave out all the rest of the comments, leave out what the legislators themselves say, leave out the idea that for many morality and religion are largely coincident (so ideas of social justice, proper punishment, etc., are often reflected in and express through religious-flavored language), and lots of laws and legislative thrusts fail this test.
Suddenly the ACA and attempts at immigration reform would be primarily religious.
This is a pile of crap. If many of the population are religious, you're going to have religion intruding in their language and complaints. Harshly imposing a purely secular regime on those who are religious is no less offensive than imposing a harshly religious regime on those who aren't. It is *not* the case that one view must preview, be labeled "peas," and everybody who disagrees must be forced to eat them by their nurturing, caring (and yet authoritarianly strict) mother.
In some ways, I'd like this law in Texas. The way they taught in much of elementary school was ridiculous. It neither helped many kids nor was it suited for most of the kids' cognitive level.
As for creationism, I've taught a high school course in which evolution is explicitly taught at one point, implicitly assumed at other times. However, young-Earth creationists would take offense at a lot more, examining things like the Big Bang, or planet formation, etc., etc. The only objections I've gotten from anybody were kids, and the only kids who objected weren't those who believed any of this, but who just wanted to disrupt because any disruption gives them free time, makes for less content to learn, and even more important for many let's them think they're important. (Because there are two ways of being equal: Keep up with others or trip up others.)
Most kids know you don't have to believe what you learn for a test. My high-school girlfriend was a strict young-Earth creationist. When we studied biology in high school, she was the top scorer, and when most of the class failed the teacher asked her to review the class for a retest he decided to give. She knew the content. She thought it was completely wrong. Most people who *don't* learn about this are just uninterested. If people were as interested in fighting the "why kids don't care" issue as they do this, you'd find schools would have less of a struggle to get more kids to graduate with decent grades. I mean, when's the last time you needed biological evolution or planetary formation for fixing a car, making a meal, balancing the books, designing a new ad campaign, installing plumbing, or most other jobs? Granted, it's a bit more useful than jer rise in Slavic languages, but for most people not much.
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