By Associated Press
Larry Booher’s 15-year stint pushing creationism in Bristol, Virginia’s John S. Battle High School is a microcosm of the education culture war I’ve dissected for years. This 2005 AP report nails the basics—Booher’s defiance, the belated crackdown—but misses the deeper rot: a school system asleep at the wheel and a community too cozy with dogma. My takes in Evolution Debate in Schools, Creationism Teacher Is Told to Stop, and An Evolving Controversy frame it broader: if the Left can flood classrooms with woke DEI trash, Christians like Booher deserve their shot too. Still, science shouldn’t bend for either. Here’s the story, cleaned up and fleshed out.
June 10, 2005
For 15 years, Larry Booher taught creationism in his high school biology class, flouting a 1987 Supreme Court ruling. He compiled a textbook, Creation Battles Evolution, and handed out three-ring binders to students at John S. Battle High School in Washington County, Virginia. Neither Superintendent Alan Lee nor School Board Chairwoman Elizabeth Lowe knew—until an anonymous tip in 2005 blew the lid off.
Booher, 48, has agreed to revise his lesson plan, insisting the book was optional extra credit for his Biology 2 elective, a class for juniors and seniors not tied to Virginia’s Standards of Learning. “He told students, ‘You may read this. You don’t have to. It has some Bible references,’” Lee said. “This teacher felt he wasn’t doing anything wrong.” The book, self-funded for 25-40 students per class, spanned nine chapters—“In the Beginning,” “Evidence for a Young Earth”—mixing internet snippets, scholarly quotes, and critiques of evolution.
The Supreme Court’s 1987 Edwards v. Aguillard decision deemed creationism—the belief God crafted the universe per the Bible—a religious doctrine, not science, unfit for public school science classes alongside evolution. “Creationism isn’t biology and has no place in a biology class,” said Kent Willis, ACLU of Virginia’s executive director. “It’s not the theory itself that’s wrong—it’s teaching it as science.” Earlier, in 1968’s Epperson v. Arkansas, the Court struck down bans on evolution teaching, reinforcing church-state separation.
Lee said Booher’s compilation pulled from diverse sources—online rants to papers questioning evolution’s evidence or backing a young Earth. None of it was vetted by the school board or his office. “It was never presented for approval,” Lee noted, dodging questions on punishment: “That’s a personnel matter.” Booher’s regret surfaced in The Roanoke Times: “I can’t change my classroom into a Sunday school class. It’s not like I tried to hide it—if administrators knew, fine; if not, I didn’t push it.” Calls to his home on June 9 met hang-ups.
Lowe, 11 years on the board, claimed ignorance: “Not a word about it.” Lee, who’s lauded Booher as “one of the finest science teachers I’ve ever seen,” said he’d return in the fall—minus the creationism. “He must teach evolution exclusively—observable scientific fact, not beliefs or religion,” Lee stressed. “I believe he’ll comply. He just stepped over the line.” No parents complained, Lee added: “This area’s very religious. They likely saw nothing wrong.”
That tracks with local sentiment. Washington County’s battled over this before—30 years of pushes for creationist texts and book bans, some grabbing national attention. A 2005 Pew poll found 64% of Americans, even secular ones, favor teaching creationism alongside evolution—a pragmatic “teach both” stance. Booher’s case echoes that tension: a community nodding at faith in class, a legal line saying no.
Booher’s not an outlier. In 2005, Dover, Pennsylvania mandated “intelligent design” in ninth-grade biology, sparking lawsuits. Kansas held hearings to rethink evolution teaching. Nationally, the debate’s a tug-of-war—fundamentalists vs. secularists, both dug in. Booher’s book claimed evolution’s “an unreasonable hypothesis riddled with fallacies,” per The Roanoke Times, while asserting “Biblical creationism correlates with known facts.” Science begs to differ—no lab’s sparked life from nothing, but Booher’s young-Earth claims lean on discredited sources like Bishop Ussher’s 4004 BC guess.
My take? Schools are a culture war petri dish. The Left’s DEI dogma—labeling kids oppressors or victims—is as unscientific as Booher’s binders. If one gets airtime, so should the other. But science class isn’t the place—teach kids to think, not parrot. Booher’s 15-year run, unchecked, shows a system failing scrutiny, not just one teacher’s zeal.
Acknowledgment: I’d like to thank Grok, an AI by xAI, for helping me refine and expand this repost. The final edits and perspective are my own. Originally by the Associated Press.
