Florida lawmakers are now debating whether to adopt a specialty license plate with the inscription “I Believe”; the design includes a Christian cross and a stained-glass window. The ACLU of Florida is opposed to the license plate. The bill is sponsored by Rep. Edward Bullard.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue took on the ACLU:
“This is not a church and state issue—it is a choice issue. No one can obtain an ‘I Believe’ license plate without purchasing it for an additional fee, and no one must buy it.
Florida already allows many specialty license plates expressing all kinds of sentiments and beliefs, so to deny Christians the right to adopt a plate which expresses their convictions is to sanction discrimination. Moreover, the ACLU, as usual, is being hypocritical.
“In the 1980s and 1990s, the ACLU chapters in Louisiana and Pennsylvania opposed laws which limited the size of vulgarities on bumper stickers.
For example, words that described bodily functions, women’s body parts and sex acts were only allowed if the lettering was in small print; the ACLU objected to this condition. As I pointed out in my book, Twilight of Liberty: The Legacy of the ACLU, the head of the Pittsburgh chapter at the time offered the following advice to motorists caught behind a car with a vulgar bumper sticker: ‘You can look at traffic, the trees, the cars around you.’
“The ACLU should take some of its own medicine: Those motorists who are offended by the Christian cross and an ‘I Believe’ specialty license plate should stare at the trees.
As for Rep. Kelly Skidmore, a Catholic who opposes the license plate because ‘I don’t want to see the Star of David next. I don’t want to see a Torah next,’ she needs to get over it. Censorship of the public expression of religion is un-American.”
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