Many folks were kind enough to forward this story about an amusement park for creationists. (Pharyngula also comments here.) Doug Keller, a UT law student, noted that “a creationist theme park has opened up to combat the propaganda at Disney World, giving the public a fair and balanced viewpoint about evolution that only Bill O’Reily could appreciate.” Another reader, a graduate student at NYU, asked, “Shouldn’t there be laws against doing this to kids?” There probably should be–there is an interesting book on the subject (Religious Schools vs. Children’s Rights [Cornell University Press, 1998]) by lawyer/philosopher James Dwyer (William & Mary Law)–but there aren’t. Among other things, as we will quickly be reminded by U.S. friends of liberty, it would violate the religious liberty of the parents in question.

But let’s think about what could be next: theme parks devoted to holocaust denial, or to showing that “war is peace,” or that the sun really does revolve around the earth–the list could go on.

But the creationist theme park is really just the tip of the iceberg–namely, the vast commercial empire devoted to producing goods and services that reinforce the beliefs of the orthodox, and shield them, and especially their children, from any other sources of information. The consequences for democracy and public culture are potentially very serious.

But religious liberty is religious liberty, after all.

UPDATE: One reader correctly points out that, quite apart from religious liberty, there is the “privacy” right of parents to educate and raise their children as they see fit–one of the issues Professor Dwyer is concerned with, as I recall, in his book. Religious liberty would be most directly implicated in any attempt by the state to regulate creationist theme parks, but it might also be implicated in the issue of parental rights over children. As it is, for example, there are limits on what parents can do to children (you can’t deny them education, health care, food; you can’t turn them in to slaves or prostitutes or drug runners, etc.). Should there be limits on the lies you can teach them? For institutional and pragmatic reasons, probably not. But should the law mandate participation in institutions (such as schools) that can provide counterweights, and insure a functional, civilized, public culture? Probably yes. But right now the U.S. fails on the second count, with possibly deleterious consequences, as noted above.