I RECENTLY GOT a specialized license plate for my car. The special plate I chose has
an interlocking “N” and “C” on it, but there are also plates honoring, and funding,
Clemson, NC State and Duke (not to mention the mystifying one for Purdue University
which is located in West Lafayette, Indiana).
The state of North Carolina currently offers over 130 different such special license
plates. Surely you have seen some of them, each of which allow the driver to promote
a personal cause, while supporting it financially and at the same time giving a few extra
dollars to the state.
With a special license plate, you can support, uncontroversially, Litter Prevention and,
bizarrely, Watermelon. You can support stock car racing 26 different ways, including
displaying a lovely Jimmy Johnson plate, an ugly Tony Stewart one, or, for the
noncommittal, a NASCAR® Generic Design edition.
While there is a “Kids First” plate (which provides funds to the North Carolina
Children’s Trust Fund), so you can support children after they are born, there is one
plate you can’t get: one that says “Choose Life,” which would support children being
born. Funds from the sale of the proposed, but not voted on, “Choose Life” plate
would be used to help women who elect to give birth by offering them pregnancy
support services, placement in a maternity homes, or adoption placement of the baby,
which ever the women choose.
In 2009 alone, 50 specialty plate bills passed out of the North Carolina legislative
committee which first hears them. But for the past eight years, the Democratic
leadership of the North Carolina General Assembly has chosen not to allow the full
legislature to vote on this one particular specialty plate.
According to the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship, the umbrella organization that
would distribute the funds raised by the “Choose Life” plate, it is the only proposed
license the committee refused to let out for a vote. Other states do not consider this
plate controversial. The “Choose Life” license plate currently is available in 24 states,
including all the other southeastern states.
NC drivers can get an “Animal Lovers” plate (which says “I Care”), and a “Save The
Sea Turtle” plate (which supports sea turtle rescue), but they can’t get one if they care
to support the rescue of baby humans.
The proposed new plate has been held up, it is said, by a general rule prohibiting
political viewpoints on specialty plates. But while “Choose Life” is said to be too
political, one currently offered plate supports the National Rifle Association. The NRA is
not political? News to me. What is political is suppressing a vote on a bill, for whatever
reason.
Some argue that the “Choose Life” plate should not be allowed because it is religious
(a very tenuous argument), but one plate which is currently available says, “In God We
Trust” (which supports the NC National Guard Soldiers and Airmen Assistance Fund) —
which I would say is a religious statement by pretty much any definition.
Planned Parenthood opposes the “Choose Life” plate because it would distribute
proceeds to groups do not give women information about abortion as an option. Of
course, Planned Parenthood could have their own plate, if they followed the same
procedure that Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship has followed — and they got the
votes to allow it.
These special license plates are not, in my view, a state-government endorsement of
anything — unless we are in a very confused state — which we may be. These plates
simply allow NC drivers to visibly support causes they individually endorse. It’s called
freedom of choice.
The real question is, from my perspective, is this how a democratic legislature should
operate? (Which should be contrasted with how a Democrat-controlled legislature
actually does.) I say let the legislators vote, then let the people choose. I guess the fear
is they might “Choose Life.”
Gary D. Gaddy mostly displays his support of various causes via this column.
A version of this story was published in the Chapel Hill Herald on Friday May 28, 2010.
Copyright 2010 Gary D. Gaddy
garygaddy.com 