June 9, 2005

Mayor Bill LaFortune
200 Civic Center
Tulsa OK 74103

Dear Mayor:

On behalf of our Tulsa membership, our national association, which works to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, is writing in strenuous objection to your vote to display a biblical version of creation at Tulsa's public-supported zoo.

We successfully brought down a similar creationist exhibit at the public zoo in Madison, Wis., in 1994, which the fundamentalist zoo director had erected in a children's exhibit. The exhibit was scientifically ludicrous, suggesting that there were only two people on the earth in 15,000 B.C., named "Adam and Eve," but it did not actually contain a scriptural passage. The Tulsa proposal is even more egregious, inappropriate and unlawful in a public zoo.

The embarrassing dummying-down of science not only places our nation at a great disadvantage internationally, but it harms the developing minds of children. The place for biblical accounts is not a public zoo, but a private home or church.

The proposed exhibit not only offends science, but the religious views of many Christians. Mainstream Protestant, Jewish and Catholic believers support evolution, and do not accept the Genesis account as literal. You cannot tax Tulsans of every and no religious persuasion in order to boost one particular denominational doctrine of faith. Even were the exhibit to be donated (which is certainly not in the reports), the Tulsa Zoo is owned and maintained by taxpayers.

It is clear that zealots intent on promoting their views in tax-supported domains are using as a lame excuse the presence of a "Hindu elephant." This decoration takes no actual religious position, and is offered as an image of diverse cultural depictions of elephants as shown by the inclusion of the Republican Party's elephant symbol!

We have members and taxpayers in Tulsa who are willing to be litigants, should it come to that. Our question: Is Darwin at your zoo, and if not, why not?

Sincerely

Annie Laurie Gaylor
Co-President

cc: Tulsa Parks