By Manya Brachear
Chicago Tribune
Vanity, my favorite sin, has found its way on to nearly 10 million license plates across the country. But in recent years, some drivers have headed to court to defend their license to testify. Is it appropriate to proclaim your religious beliefs on a personalized license plate issued by the state?
That question has been taken up in part by this blog before. But it's now at the core of debates across the country as drivers flaunt favorite slogans from Bible verses to profanity on their automotive rear-ends.
Most recently, the debate has erupted in South Carolina, where Gov. Mark Sanford could approve the first specialty license plate in the nation to feature a religious symbol—in this case a cross.
The proposed plate, which also would contain the message “I Believe,” bypasses the typical procedure for a specialty plate to be included in the bevy of options for S.C. drivers. That inclusion requires the signatures of at least 400 people.
For that reason, the Council for Secular Humanism and American Jewish Congress have threatened lawsuits if Sanford approves the plate. They say the plate’s legislative origins would equal a government endorsement of Christianity.
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Meanwhile, other states are quarreling over the license plate numbers chosen by some drivers, known as vanity plates.
“Motorists are very passionate about their own personal stories and they are choosing to tell those stories in eight characters or less by paying the state extra money to do that on a vanity plate,” said Jason King, a spokesman for the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators. “We see the evidence in court cases."
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“DMVs are meeting at the crossroads with consumers over the First Amendment,” King said. “It puts DMVs in an awkward position of having to dictate what is appropriate and what is not.”
Earlier this year, South Dakota legislators tried to eliminate the debate by proposing to eliminate vanity tags. The bill went nowhere. Vanity tags are just too popular.
According to the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, of the eligible 253 million motor vehicles on Canadian and American roads, about 9.7 million have vanity plates. More than 13 percent of the cars registered in Illinois have vanity plates, the third largest percentage in the nation behind Virginia and New Hampshire.
For the full text of this blog visit:
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/religion_theseeker/2008/05/does-belief-bel.html