This story starts with a bright young woman deciding that along with having an official state bird and state tree, South Carolina needed an official state fossil.  Because fossils are cool.

She picked the wooly mammoth because some of the first wooly mammoth bones were discovered in South Carolina in 1725.  This third grader wrote letters to her two legislators at the state house.  They are both Democrats and she figured that meant they can read, whereas that is questionable among South Carolina Republicans.

Anyway, they like her idea and introduce a bill in the South Carolina House requesting that the wooly mammoth be named the official state fossil.  They thought it was a dandy way to teach kids how bills get passed.

Ridgeway and Johnson both have filed bills — H.4482 and S.854 — to make the wooly mammoth, an extinct genus of hairy elephant, the official state fossil. McConnell said she faithfully is following the bills’ progress online, where both are in committee.

Oh hell no.  The House passes it as is, no problem.  Then the steeple people get involved and everything goes to crap.

Sen. Kevin Bryant, a pharmacist and self-described born-again Christian who has compared President Obama with Osama bin Laden, voted to sustain a veto by Governor Nikki Haley of funding for a rape crisis center, and called climate change a “hoax,” proposed amending the bill to include three verses from the Book of Genesis detailing God’s creation of the Earth and its living inhabitants—including mammoths.

Yeah, mammoths and damn snakes … like Bryant.

The official state tree is the palmetto but I looked it up and there isn’t one damn word about God creating the palmetto tree in the legislation.  The state waltz is the Richardson Waltz but you do not see a stinkin’ word about God creating it in that legislation either.

Personally, I think they’re just picking on the wooly mammoth because Jesus didn’t ride one.

By the way, if South Carolina doesn’t have an official state tool, I’d like to nominate Kevin Bryant.

Thanks to Abigail for the heads up.