Somewhere in the documents that founded the United States is buried the principle that religion should be separate from the state. It is a pity that the founding fathers never carved this directive ten feet high in marble, because some people just don’t get it. It seems that in each American generation there is someone who tries to inject a little scripture into the state – for medicinal purposes of course!
So it was in the State of Tennessee in 1925 that House Bill No. 185 came to be: “Section 1. Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Tennessee, That it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the Universities, Normals and all other public schools of the State which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the State, to teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.
Now the events of the movie I am about to describe and the current US controversy about “Intelligent Design vs. Evolution” would never have happened if the Founding Fathers had also decreed that the State should be separated from education. Bugger!
Had they done so then the great State of Tennessee wouldn’t have arrested John Scopes in 1925 for doing his job as a teacher of High School Biology and telling them about Charles Darwin. Scopes wouldn’t have needed Clarence Darrow to defend him and William Jennings Bryan could have continued worshiping his god without harming anyone. Sadly that is not the way it went down, see http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/scopes.htm if you want a blow by blow account.

Fast forward a quarter of a century and you find intellectual freedom under attack once more this time by a crusade against commies (real or imagined) and “Un-Americans” led by the vile Sen. Joe McCarthy. Playwrights Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee (no, not the Confederate General) decide to protest this assault and used the Scope’s trial as an analogy. They created a supurb court-room drama and a powerful riposte to lawmakers, past and present, who lament godless government.

The movie, directed by Stanley Kramer, is loosely based on the events of the trail. The names of the main protagonists have changed and a few extra characters have been added for dramatic spice. Bertram Cates (Dick York) is the filthy swine polluting children’s minds with evolutionary filth. Gene Kelly has a dramatic role (rare for him so I’m told) as the cynical big city news reporter – a role assumed by one H. L Mencken in 1925. Spencer Tracy is the agnostic defence lawyer while Frederic March plays the bombastic Matthew Harrison Brady – leader of God’s legal lynch mob.

The intellectual duel between the characters played by Tracy and March is both electric and eclectic (transcripts from http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches.htm):
“Brady: Your Honor, I am willing to sit here and endure Mr. Drummond's sneering and his disrespect, for he is pleading the case for the prosecution by his contempt for all that is holy.
Drummond: I object! I object! I object!!
Brady: On what grounds?! Is is possible that something is holy to the celebrated agnostic?
Drummond: Yes. The individual human mind. In a child's power to master the multiplication table, there is more sanctity than in all your shouted "amens" and "holy holies" and "hosannas." An idea is a greater monument than a cathedral.”

These few minutes are worth the price of admission alone – of course they loose their dramatic effect portrayed here like this. The simple fact is that no written word can describe the passion and raw righteous power of Spencer Tracy in these few moments. He literally thunders away at Brady, an otherwise decent man, who thinks nothing of imprisoning Cates for the sin of exercising the mind that Brady’s god provided him. And there you have the genius of Frederic March, he convincingly portrays the energy, intelligence and sincerity of a man who believes that faith-in-god will cure the world. A sadly misguided man quite prepared to use the law as a stick to instill that faith.

This movie is truly a great monument to the human mind.