DON'T LET TAGS PROMOTE CAUSES

If someone asked the state oversight committee that approves state
specialty licenses plate for a "Legalize Marijuana" tag, we suspect the
committee would quickly turns thumbs down on the request.

But the committee approved an equally controversial plate that says "Choose
Life," a highly publicized motto of groups that oppose abortion rights.

So why is one OK, and the other not?

We suspect that if a proponent of legalizing marijuana, or of any of dozens
of other controversial causes, went to court, Alabamians would find
(probably after a lengthy and costly court battle) that if the state is
going to open its license plates up to a few controversial issues, it will
have to open them up to others.

So the state of Alabama could soon be advertising itself all over the
nation's highways with license plates that promote the South seceding from
the Union, as the League of the South has proposed, or banning flouride or
putting the Confederate battle flag back up over the Capitol or taking it
down or whatever is the cause of the year.

This is not about whether abortion laws in the United States are what they
should be; it is about whether the state of Alabama should open up its
license plates to serve as billboards for causes.

In Alabama, a committee of legislators and other state and county officials
approve potential new tags. Then if any group can get 1,000 people to pay
for the tags, the state will make them and issue them. Currently about 900
people have agreed to purchase the Choose Life tags. Many opponents of
abortion rights will applaud those tags, of course. And those pushing the
tags claim the "Choose Life" motto is innocuous.

But Alabama citizens and taxpayers are all over the waterfront on the issue
of abortion. At least one national poll found that when asked if they
believed that all abortions should be illegal, many of the same people who
said yes turned around and also answered yes when asked if the choice of
having an abortion should be left solely to the discretion of a woman and
her doctor.

The point is that most citizens don't find themselves solely in one camp or
the other on such issues as abortion.

If someone wants to turn his or her bumper into a billboard for a cause,
they have that right under the First Amendment. That's why bumper stickers
abound. But turning their license plate into a billboard implies that the
state of Alabama and all of its citizens somehow agree with whatever motto
is printed.

But if the state is going to do it for one controversial cause, fairness
and probably the law dictate that the state should do it for any cause that
can muster the money for 1,000 tags.

But do we really want to go down that road?