Deal reached on teaching evolution

Seanna Adcox, Associated Press 10:40 p.m. EDT July 29, 2014

COLUMBIA – A proposed change in South Carolina’s biology standards for teaching evolution is designed to encourage discussion in the classroom.

A six-member panel voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend the compromise to the full state Board of Education and Education Oversight Committee. Approval from both is needed for any change to education standards. ... The compromise essentially defines science and says evolution is a scientific theory. It could end months of disagreement between the boards, which meet again next month, in South Carolina’s latest flap over religion and science.
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Sen. Mike Fair, a member of the oversight board, had pushed for language calling for students to question Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection — to “construct scientific arguments that seem to support and scientific arguments that seem to discredit” it. But the state Board of Education rejected that proposed addition last month.
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Rob Dillon, founder of South Carolinians for Science Education, said he doesn’t have a problem with the wording, but rather the placement of the two paragraphs. They would be more appropriate as an overall header for high school standards in biology, chemistry and physics, he said. ... “I object to evolution being singled out,” said Dillon, a biology professor at the College of Charleston. “It attracts controversy to evolution. … It’s no more controversial than photosynthesis.”

Political positions

Fair, a conservative Christian, has been a supporter of abstinence-based sex education and has proposed legislation mandating that sex education classes include information that homosexual behavior is "unnatural, unhealthy and illegal."

Fair supports the teaching of intelligent design in public schools. In 2008, he introduced a bill that would have specifically allowed public school teachers to critique evolution in their classrooms. The bill died in committee.

Fair is pro-life and has referred to abortions as our nation’s holocaust. During a state senate debate over a proposed bill to ban abortions past 20 weeks, Fair said that according to Hitler "because you're a Jew, you had no right to live. In essence, some people are more qualified to live than others. And that's what we're saying here", referring to abortion.

In 2011, Fair proposed a bill that would have prohibited Sharia law from being enacted in the state of South Carolina. The following month, Fair unsuccessfully introduced legislation that would have prohibited Common Core educational standards from being imposed on South Carolina public schools.