Centerfield

Join the Festivus Clean Plate Club

Here's a follow up to a post I made recently about state license plates and political messages. In Massachusetts, a pro-lifer is working on qualifying to bring "choose life" license plates to MA.

Merry Nordeen is gathering support for a ''Choose Life" license plate, part of a nationwide effort by abortion opponents to raise money for groups that support adoption. In some of the 12 other states with Choose Life license plates, critics who contend that the plates are political statements have filed lawsuits, and one case from Tennessee may end up going to the US Supreme Court.

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Last weekend, Nordeen took her campaign to the Internet, asking supporters by e-mail to back her effort to collect 3,000 registrations by summer. If she gathers $40 registration checks from 3,000 people who agree to buy the license plates, the state will issue them, said Amie O'Hearn, a spokeswoman for the Registry.

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Massachusetts has 12 special license plates that support causes from environmental protection to curing cancer to the families of those killed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None supports political or religious groups.

If the Choose Life plates are approved, $12 of the $40 fee would go to the state. The other $28 would go to the groups supported by the Massachusetts Choose Life chapter, headed by Nordeen and her husband, Kenneth, who are the parents of six children. Nordeen said the group would award the money to antiabortion organizations that submitted grant applications, from pregnancy counseling groups to agencies that place children for adoption.

Read the whole thing. It touches on more ideas and provides good details. That's why you should read the whole thing.

IMO it's a bad idea to place overtly political messages on state license plates. If you want your free speech, make an effing bumper sticker, don't drag the state government into a food fight. The currently allowable MA plates are IMO innocuous. Although if you really wanted to, you could construe those as political, too. If pushed for absolute consistency, I'd say "cancel all of them." But if you really want to argue that "Go Red Sox" or "We like Nature" are political messages with a straight face, I think you need to get out more.

It's especially hypocritical that some states will allow some messages and not others, and ultimately, I bet that's some sort of free speech abridgement. States, either don't do any political speech messages, or don't gate keep.

If this effort works and a choose life plate is issued, I may be driven to the only recourse that makes sense...I'll start my own drive for a plate that makes a mockery of the whole shebang. I wonder, can I collect 3,000 registrations with $40 registration checks from 3,000 people who agree to buy license plates that say "choose festivus" or "fart at wingnuts" or maybe "clean plate club" with a logo of a red circle and a line crossing out a wingnut?

Folks, join the Festivus Clean Plate Club. We don't want zealots trafficking their bile on our state license plates. And we want more official holidays. More parties, fewer party-poopers!"