If a law were passed that required the teaching of both evolutionary theory and creationism in state schools, that would actually be a great improvement on the present situation. From teaching philosophy of religion classes for a number of semesters now (where I always cover the design argument), I can tell you that no more than perhaps 5% of my students have ever been taught evolutionary theory. If it were required material in biology (ideally with creationism being taught in a religion class), public understanding of this idea would improve greatly.
Of course I would rather see evolutionary theory taught, with creationism only covered in (currently non-existent) courses in critical thinking. Still, if more people actually knew anything about evolutionary theory, I believe a far higher proportion of the population would see that creationism just doesn't stand up by comparison.
Teaching creationism as a real science probably will make the USA a laughing stock of the world, but if it were accompanied by explanation of evolutionary theory, people would be a lot smarter in their thinking.
Until then, I will continue to use part of my philosophy of religion and philosophy of human nature classes as crash courses in evolution.
Max
Implications of Advanced Technologies
President, Extropy Institute: http://www.extropy.org
EXTRO 4 Conference: Biotech Futures. See http://www.extropy.org/ex4/e4main.htm