Wonderful thread on why US evolutionary biologists and paleontologists tend to be so skeptical of intelligent design and creationism: it was used to make a legal framework by which course content is set by courts and not educators. I'm going to add to it: ID and fungibility https://twitter.com/incisorial/status/1313508685608411136

Sometimes people wonder why anti-abortion people are against women getting mammograms at Planned Parenthood. It's because of fungibility: if PP gets a dollar from the federal government for mammograms, it frees a dollar for abortion, or so the idea goes

The school board suits are the same idea. If the school has to go through lengthy court battles or replace texts, it costs money. Every dollar they spend can't be used elsewhere. By forcing these confrontations, they de facto defund public schools

Heads, they win. They get to preach to your kids on your tax dollars. Tails, you lose. Your kids' school district's budget got eaten on suits. Who does it hurt? People who can't afford a private school. In the US who is that?

For years, the ID people were happy to partner with creationist orgs that were explicitly racist, sexist, and homophobic. Is it a coincidence that their legal strategy focused on hurting public schools? No, it's part of a far larger strategy across the right to gut infrastructure

The ID movement in the US was an explicit and coordinated attack on the separation of church and state, as well as public infrastructure. There's no good faith engagement with that.