In America's culture wars, schoolchildren are on the front lines. From Maine to California, parents, teachers and school boards are squabbling -- and sometimes suing one another -- over what children should learn about sex, how to teach about religion's role in American history and how students ought to be introduced to the mystery of humans' origins. President Bush's re-election victory Nov. 2 -- widely interpreted as defeat for liberals -- seems to have emboldened the religious right and has enlivened the debate. "I think right now there's a lot of new energy among some conservative Christian groups," said Charles C. Haynes, a senior scholar at the Freedom Forum's First Amendment Center. The teaching of evolution is a center of contention. Parents and school boards are involved in court battles in at least 13 states. But there are other flashpoints: = In Cupertino, Calif., fifth-grade teacher Steven Williams has filed suit against the school district that employs him. Williams claims his First Amendment rights are violated by a policy that requires him to submit for approval any classroom handout mentioning religion. The Phoenix-based Alliance Defense Fund, which is representing Williams, says the school's policy effectively bans him from handing out such important historical documents as the Declaration of Independence, which says: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator. ..." School district officials call Williams' claim nonsense. The Declaration of Independence is right in the students' textbooks, said district Communications Manager Jerry Nishihara. What's not in the textbooks -- and for good reason, school officials say -- is the material that Williams was handing out to students on his own. School officials said Williams gave students a handout titled "What Great Leaders Have Said About the Bible." The handout contains quotes from nine U.S. presidents and another from Jesus. School officials said some of the quotes are fictitious. District officials also cite another handout -- the text of a prayer book, supposedly George Washington's. Historians concluded in the 19th century that the book wasn't Washington's, although it may have belonged to one of his descendants. = In suburban Dallas, a school district is being sued for prohibiting students from exchanging cards and candy canes with Christmas-specific messages at a winter-holiday party. "We're just sick and tired of all this criticism of all these foundational things that's made America a great country," said Jordan Lorence, senior counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund. = Michael Newdow, a California man who complains that the inclusion of the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance violate his 10-year-old daughter's right to religious freedom, is going back to court. Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out his original complaint on technical grounds, saying Newdow could not sue on his daughter's behalf because he is divorced and does not have full custody. This time, his petition has been joined by other parents whose custody rights are not at issue. = Texans have squabbled recently over how textbooks should define marriage and whether books used in health classes should mention condoms or contraception as an option for sexually active teenagers. In both cases, conservatives won the day. Textbooks used in public schools in Texas explicitly define marriage as between a man and a woman. And they present only one option for avoiding pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases -- abstinence. Books on all kinds of subjects continue to be a perennial source of controversy in schools. Year after year, parents object to the books their children are assigned or check out of school libraries. Parents often cite language or sexual material that they consider offensive. According to the American Library Association, there have been widespread objections to the children's book "King and King," which tells the tale of a gay royal couple. Religious conservatives also object to "occult" themes, such as sorcery and witchcraft. Among their top targets is the wildly popular Harry Potter series. = The school board in Dover, Pa., voted in October to require the teaching of "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution in ninth-grade biology classes. "Intelligent design," a favored theory of religious conservatives, argues that life is too complex to have arisen solely through evolution and that the guiding hand of a superior being must be behind it. "Anyone with half a brain should have known we were going to be sued," said school board member Angie Yingling, who initially supported the idea but since has reconsidered. On behalf of eight families, the American Civil Liberties Union sued in December, arguing that intelligent design is not science but, instead, an attempt to inject religion into science classes. The Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank that promotes intelligent design, argues that if evolution were taught more skeptically, students would come to recognize that the theory alone cannot explain the incredible complexity of life and the biological processes that produced it. Because intelligent design is a new theory, "we don't think it should be mandated" in schools, said John West, the associate director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute. "The thing is, there's very little in intelligent design to teach," Glenn Branch, deputy of the National Center for Science Education, in Oakland, Calif., insisted. "The big uniting principle of intelligent design is that evolution is bad." = In Georgia's Cobb County, a campaign by parents convinced the school board to require a warning sticker on biology textbooks stating that "evolution is a theory, not a fact" and imploring students to consider the books' contents "with an open mind." The ACLU sued, and a Georgia court ordered the stickers removed. Ken Miller, who co-authored the biology textbook used in Cobb County, called the sticker a failed attempt at compromise. The sticker, he said, "is factually incorrect, it is scientifically misleading and it is very poor educational policy."

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