On their own, the true believers aren’t very threatening. The bills they introduce are often comically unconstitutional and tend to die in committee. The problem is that these legislators and the people who elect them are all in the same political party.

That party has plenty of people in it who aren’t true believers. They know that trying to smuggle creationism into schools is unconstitutional and that there’s nothing traditionally Republican about trying to do an end run around the Constitution. But they recognize that the true believers are a major constituency of their party, and they want to signal to that constituency that they share values. So they engage in vice signaling, supporting things they know are wrong but will signal shared values.

In some cases, this includes disturbing levels of support for the clearly bonkers bills filed by the true believers. But in more insidious cases, the vice signaling can involve supporting bills that are carefully crafted to enable creationists without blatantly violating the Constitution. Two such bills, which claim to champion “academic freedom” while singling out evolution as in need of critical thinking, have become law in Louisiana and Tennessee.