Perhaps it has to happen this way. Half of the states might end up jumping on this bandwagon, and a dozen may even get the legislation passed. And then the people will get their vote, and the legislators will join the Dover school board on the unemployment line, which could finally put a coffin-nail in this insane mixture of religion and politics that is infecting the once-quite-sensible conservative right.

Ultimately, the people will get their vote, even if it's years later and involves firing the person who chose not to listen to their voice, and in this case, as in so many in this country, it's probably gonna take a massive backlash before the people paying lip-service to the religious right realize that these people aren't their base, just an extremely vocal fringe that they need to kick out of bed if they want to survive.

If they just quibble and kill this measure in session, it's only going to get reintroduced next year, and the year after that, ad infinitum, or snuck into some other bill, or introduced peacemeal (such as the current striking down of RICO extortion statutes applying to people threatening abortion clinics). If they 'win,' and then get utterly creamed for it, the survivors are less likely to touch this again in our generation.

Politicians don't learn from history, they're like children, each and every one of them has to get burned before they realize that fire's not a toy.