In 1925, it was understandable, especially in the Bible Belt, that evolution would not be looked upon kindly by most communities. Today, it is another disturbing sign that our communities are being led backward by a reactionary mentality that starts in the White House.

Two weeks ago, administrators in the Dover Area School District near Harrisburg, Pa., informed biology classes that they would be required to learn about the "intelligent design" theory as an alternative to evolution.

The intelligent design concept presumes that the universe is so complex it had to be created by an unspecified guiding force. And since the Supreme Court in 1987 barred the teaching of creationism in schools, proponents had to give it another name.

In Cobb County, Ga., the school board recently decided to appeal a court order that schools remove from biology textbooks stickers that say that evolution is "a theory, not a fact."

The school board decided to use the stickers in 2002 when it acquired new biology textbooks that dealt extensively with evolution. The judge’s ruling against the stickers said they could be interpreted as connoting an endorsement of religion.

In Grantsburg, Wis., the school district revised its biology curriculum in November to permit the presentation of creationism. The school board quickly backed down, however, after a public and clerical outcry — and the threat of lawsuits.

The Dover school board in Pennsylvania is going to end up in court, too, as a group of parents represented by the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit alleging that the so-called "intelligent design" theory really is a variation of creationism, the biblical-based view that posits God as the creator of life.

Believers in intelligent design no doubt hold that a creator has to be behind life, or the universe itself. It is another way of saying that God is like an engineer who designed the mechanism or process called the universe, pushed a button to set it in motion and sat back to enjoy the show.

And yet more controversy developed recently when the president of Harvard University remarked at a conference that, in effect, any "intelligent designer" likely was a man because women have innate differences that explain why they lag in science and math.

The comments by Lawrence H. Summers on Jan. 14 caused an uproar of political correctness for the gender-equity issue.

Summers was speaking at the National Bureau of Economic Research conference, and some women participants walked out during his talk, which he later acknowledged did intimate that social factors alone do not explain differences in performance between the sexes.

Studies show that women and girls do not score as well as men and boys on math and science tests and that far more men seek out engineering careers and thus more men end up with top faculty posts in math and the applied sciences.

Unfortunately for Summers, he suggested that biology might have something to do with explaining those differences. Bad move. Within a week he was forced to apologize after the outrage spread from faculty committees at Harvard to academia across the country.

Apparently the politically correct position is that socialization alone accounts for academic differences between the sexes. Girls are raised and educated to feel alien to and not seek out success in math and science, which results in their lesser performances on such tests.

It should also be clear, however, that biology likely is a factor. Look at the differences in physiology, hormones, chemical balances and brain processes. What’s so bad, even for a Harvard president, about suggesting that social factors don’t tell the whole story. The position is not that women lack something or are inferior; it’s just that they are different.

John Scopes would enjoy the controversy. Today, we almost have the Summers Gender Trial instead of the Monkey Trial. Of course, Scopes went into his dispute willingly, without apology.

Maybe it’s a shame that Summers backed down. Perhaps a trial is what we need to put all the factors on the table for public and academic consumption.

The controversies over evolution and gender ought to lead the creationists to wonder, if there were a design, should we really be using the word "intelligent" to describe it.

Cary Brunswick is managing editor of The Daily Star and can be reached at 432-1000, ext 217, or cary@thedailystar.com.