Classroom Evolution's Grass-Roots Defender

Lawrence, for the first time in his life, had volunteered for a campaign, holding aloft signs last year for the Democratic presidential nominee, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), at Wilson Boulevard and North Glebe Road in Arlington during morning rush hour. At a post-election meeting of the Virginia Grassroots Coalition, Lawrence wrote his name and Falls Church phone number on a blackboard and said, "If you want to do something, here's my name and number, and my living room is free."

A few people approached, including Irving Wainer, 61, a research scientist at the National Institutes of Health. At a meeting Dec. 12, they were joined by Mary Detweiler, 54, a fellow Kerry sign-carrier. She had grown "very depressed" about the election, she said, but after feeling energized by the campaign -- her first political role since opposing the Vietnam War -- she did not want to let the spirit go.

At the December meeting at Lawrence's house, the dozen or so guests agreed that they had become more frustrated since the election, not less. They discussed drafting a "biting and pertinent" leaflet to distribute at Metro stations to inspire action from like-minded administration opponents.

But action for, or against, what? It was Wainer who suggested the focus on evolution.

"I decided I had personally had enough," said Wainer, a District resident who said he believes that the activism of the religious right is inhibiting science. He contends that the scientific establishment, initially dismissive of the intelligent-design forces, has been slow to see the debate as a primarily political battle.

"If you can [cast] enough doubt on evolution," the Rev. Terry Fox, a Southern Baptist minister in Kansas, said this year, "liberalism will die."

By February, the group decided to focus on evolution in Virginia. With little money or manpower, they figured their biggest potential advantage lay in the fact that the intelligent-design debate had not reached Virginia. They decided to make a stand by getting there first and setting the terms of the discussion, just as pro-creationism Republicans have done elsewhere, they said.

Greg Tinkler, a young neuroscientist sympathetic to the cause, presented a lesson on Darwinian theory and intelligent design.

"I'm just a citizen, not a scientist," Detweiler said. "I've even had to do a lot of reading to catch up."

She was not alone. A draft leaflet that the group sent to about 75 like-minded people landed with an ugly thud. It warned that "small special-interest groups" were threatening the teaching of evolution in communities across the United States. If science education suffered, the state would suffer, said the 19-line flier, which ended with the cry, "Keep Virginia Evolving!"

The most salient responses, the group's members figured, were the ones that asked why evolution and why now. Most respondents did not see the urgency or a threat. The media director for one national organization advised them to leave well enough alone. If the intelligent-design forces were ignored, she suggested, maybe they would fade away.

"Here we are in our cocoon of Democratic people in Arlington, and we're not getting the response we expected," Detweiler recalled thinking.