'That's Not My Religion'

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Religiously, young earth creationism and that influencing science is not what my religious views entail. There is a separation there. You know, my religion accepts that science can explain things in the world as we perceive them, but that science is not going to touch theology.

It can't explain the divine creator. Intelligent design, every aspect I've ever heard of it, is religious creationism. You know, if the designer is not -- an intelligent designer is not a God, even if you don't want to refer to it as Judeo-Christian God, what is it? Aliens? Then you're still not addressing the origins of life that you speak of. Where did the aliens come from?

So there has to be a supernatural component too. And that, to me, is religious. That's not my religion, and that's not something that should be shared in the science classroom. Scientifically, there is no merit right now to the concept of intelligent design. Philosophically or religiously, is it a possibility? Sure.

But it's out of the realm of science. And my career as a science educator is educating students what science is. And we also educate them in what the limits of science happen to be. And through the things the Board has done, through their policy, through the mailing of their newsletter here, they're setting up the students that would be walking into my classroom to have conflict right away. They have statements in here dealing with -- am I allowed to read from this?

THE COURT: We're in the midst of a narrative answer, and I think the narrative answer might be getting a little extended.

ATTORNEY: We just need you to tell us. The question was, how does that cause you harm, and you started to complain how this causes harm. If you could complete your answer?

REHM: Professionally covered. Personally, you know, going out, we have issues with people, where they're not very pleased to see us around and are not hesitating to let you know that. And it's not very polite. It goes beyond atheist to adding other words onto it that I don't care to repeat.

So there is a lot of issues and a lot of different ways in which it hurts me, not to mention now my daughter is in the biology course, and there are students in the class that want to know, well, what if you do come from monkeys? What's going on with this? Well, you know that evolution doesn't make sense. Why are your parents doing this?

So it has filtered down to the kids, and it's affecting my children directly. And that's a problem. And if the school board didn't pass the policy, it never would have occurred. Prior to their policy change, I never once had a student in class criticize another student for believing evolution, even when we were teaching it. It didn't happen.

MR. HARVEY: I have no further questions, Your Honor.

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