It may have been nominated for an Oscar, but Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth still has the ability to scare the superstitious.

Frosty Hardiman, a parent of seven in the southern suburbs of Seattle, learned that one of his daughters would be watching the film as part of a science class and immediately fired off an angry email to the school board.

“No, you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation — the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet — for global warming,” Hardiman wrote.

The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who said he believes that a warming planet is “one of the signs” of Jesus Christ’s imminent return for Judgment Day.

His angry e-mail, along with complaints from a few other parents, stopped the film from being shown.

The email also demanded that the school board impose a ban on screenings of the film for the district’s 22,500 students and led to the science teacher being told that she would receive a disciplinary letter for not following school board rules that require her to seek written permission to present “controversial” materials in class.

The good news is that the ban - which the school board said was merely a “moratorium” - was lifted shortly afterwards, subject to conditions. But the fact that a ban was imposed in the first place has appalled the film’s producers and triggered a backlash.

Less happy is the fact that the school board has opted for “balance”. This means that the film can only be shown with the written permission of a principal and only when it is balanced by alternative views that are approved by both a principal and the superintendent of schools.

(Via CHUD)

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