A few months ago I reported about a bill submitted in the Alabama state legislature that would allow students to leave school to take a released-time course in young earth creationism and receive full academic credit for doing so. The NCSE reports that the bill has now died with the end of the current legislative session.

When the last day of the regular legislative session of the Alabama legislature ended on May 16, 2012, a bill that would have established a credit-for-creationism scheme died.House Bill 133, if enacted, would have authorized “local boards of education to include released time religious instruction as an elective course for high school students.” Its sponsor, Blaine Galliher (R-District 30), explained his purpose in introducing the bill to WAFF in Huntsville, Alabama (February 5, 2012): “They teach evolution in the textbooks, but they don’t teach a creation theory … Creation has just as much right to be taught in the school system as evolution does and I think this is simply providing the vehicle to do that.”

The Birmingham News (February 17, 2012) later reported that Galliher introduced the bill at the behest of Joseph Kennedy, a former teacher who “was fired in 1980 for reading the Bible and teaching creationism at Spring Garden Elementary School when parents of the public school sixth-grade students objected and he refused to stop.” Kennedy indicated that he and his supporters were poised to offer a course on creationism in their local school district, using a Bible with notes by the Institute for Creation Research’s Henry Morris to “give students good sound scientific reasons to support their faith in the seven-day creation and the young Earth,” if the bill passed.