Letter: Play on Scopes trial designed to ridicule

The play openly mocks theism, religion, the South and William Jennings Bryan (the famous attorney pitted against the equally famous Clarence Darrow).

While the play's authors used fictional names and places, occasional courtroom exchanges were taken word-for-word from the trial transcript, confusing many that the play's script is an historical account of the Scopes trial. The play portrays the people of "Hillsboro" as narrow-minded, ignorant, rude and worse, when in fact Darrow himself described the people of Dayton as having treated him "better, kindlier, and more hospitably than I fancied would have been the case in the North."

While the play portrays Scopes (Bertram Cates) as a persecuted school teacher cast into jail for teaching evolution, the fact is that Scopes was not even a science teacher and never taught evolution. He was never jailed, and in fact was recruited by the ACLU and local Dayton businessmen to be the foil for a test case opposing the Butler Act.

I am saddened that the arts center chose to stage a play whose obvious intention is to mock Christians and bias public opinion against anyone who dares to question Darwinian evolution.

Richard Sanders

This story was originally published October 10, 2015 at 11:25 PM with the headline "Letter: Play on Scopes trial designed to ridicule."