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PAGE 6 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE June 6, 1986
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The cutting edge
Conflict in Louisiana
Rabinove, “1 am astonished. ! have
never heard ol anything compara-
bv Edwin Black
Conclusion
Questions have been raised about
the controversial handling of
Louisiana’s tenacious litigation to
permit Creation Science to be
taught in public schools. Not only
has Louisiana Attorney General
William Guste allowed a private
fundamentalist group to litigate
the case, soon to be heard by the
Supreme Court, he has allowed
them to pay for more than 90 per
cent of the state’s legal fees and
expenses—to date exceeding over
a million dollars. Although nothing
is being done in secret, the entire
arrangement is not only unprece
dented, it appears to violate the
Louisiana Ethics Code.
Three issues dominate: 1) Is it
correct to appoint known Creation
Science advocate Wendell Bird as
a special attorney general sworn to
uphold the best interests of the
entire state? 2) Is it ethical for a
private ideological pressure group,
the Creation Science Legal Defense
Fund, to pay the state's expenses,
and the salary of its special attor
ney general? 3) Whose interest does
Wendell Bird and his two other
deputized creationist attorneys
serve, that of Louisiana, or that of
the CSDLF which is paying them?
Before approaching the contro
versy, be assured that nothing here
has been done in secret. The CSDLF
has occasionally been named as the
funding source in the Louisiana
press, which has hotly debated
creationist legislation. Nonetheless,
many Jewish legal experts involved
in the case were not aware that out
side funding was supporting the
state’s case.
Typical was the response of Mare
Stern, legal director of the Ameri
can Jewish Congress, who has filed
a friend of the court brief in the
case. Stern was totally unaware of
the Bird-CSDLF deal. “It’s dis
turbing that the state of Louisiana
has agreed to abdicate its govern
ment responsibilities to a private
group,’’said Stern. Sam Rabinove,
legal director of the American Jew
ish Committee, was equally un-
hle to this and I’ve been in the con
stitutional litigation business about
20 years.”
Ironically even Guste’s staff was
in the dark about the group. Rusty
Jabour, Guste’s press aide who
indicates he has been “handling
this controversy for five years since
Among those who knew of
the involvement of the
CSDLF, including New
Orleans ACLU legal
director Martha Kegel,
none of them knew that the
Creation Science group
was defraying both fees
and expenses. The
difference is key. ’
the beginning,” did not know the
name of the group nor the source
of the funding. Neither did other
Guste aides when asked.
Among those who knew of the
involvement of the CSDLF, in
cluding New Orleans ACLU legal
director Martha Kegel, none of
them knew that the Creation
Science group was defraying both
fees and expenses. The difference is
key. Fees relate to the lawyer's ser
vices, and can be argued as part of
volunteer activities. Expenses such
as xeroxing, travel, telephone and
postage are the state’s own cost of
doing business. Under the current
arrangement, two regular Guste
staff attorneys perform supervisory
work, with their phone calls and a
staff time absorbed by the office’s
general budget. They do not travel,
incur no special expense and in
reviewing Bird’s briefs, perform
just a few percent of the actual
work.
In any event, no one in Louisi
ana government contacted realized
the extent of the CSDLF’s expen
ditures— in excess of a million dol
lars. One assistant attorney general
close to the ease believed that the
state’s original outlay of 571,000
comprised “90 percent of the time
It would be easy for those who
disagree with Creation Science to
attack Guste for appointing an
acknowledged creationist as a spe
cial attorney general in the ease.
“But such appointments arc reallv
commonplace,” says Charles
Wittenstein at the Anti-Defamation
League’s Atlanta office. Wittenstein
reminds that anti-segregationists
were frequently appointed special
attorneys general during the civil
rights movement. Rusty Jabour,
Guste’s information officer, cites
the current prosecution of an en
vironmental case using the volun
teer services of a leading environ
mental organization’s counsel. At
torneys from major Jewish groups
have often been called upon to help
state governmental units delend
church state issues. To utilize a
creationist counsel, then, only seems
logical because Louisiana did pass
a creationist law.
But critics still abound, stressing
that the CSDLF is openly devoted
to religious hegemony. “Decisions
are being made not by the attorney
general elected to serve the best
interests of the entire state,” objects
Martha Kegel of the New Orleans
ACLU. “but an ideological group
whose stated aim is clearly reli
gious.”
As proof of the religious hegem
ony intended by Bird’s group. Kegel
cites initial correspondence betw een
Bill Keith and Paul Elwanger, a
fundamentalist who was drafting
the model creationist legislation
used in the Arkansas effort and
later improved upon in Louisiana.
In the letter, Elwanger wrote. “1
view this whole battle as one be
tween God and anti-God forces..
It behooves Satan to do all he can
to thwart our efforts and confuse
the issue at every turn.”
Nate Perlmutter, national direc
tor of the Anti-Defamation League,
termed the whole idea “a slippery
slope. If a community is predom
inantly of one faith, by sheer
numbers and money, of course the
elected officials can be more re
sponsive to that group. But this
( ontinued next page.
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