There's a new license plate available in South Carolina. Featuring the words, "I Believe," the plate displays a cross superimposed onto a very church-like stained-glass window.
We believe it's a bad idea.
It's one thing to stop at a red light and contemplate the bumper stickers on the car in front of you expressing religious beliefs, or to try to decipher what turns out to be a religious message on someone's vanity plate. That represents the free flow of ideas.
It's quite another when the government has sanctioned the message, as has South Carolina's legislature by making such plates available. Gov. Mark Sanford allowed the bill to become law without his signature.
It's not a good move, and likely will leave South Carolina facing a lawsuit. We can't see such a plate as anything other than the state's favoring Christianity over other religions, a clear First Amendment violation.
If the Palmetto State wants to prove that's not the case, then it would have to make available official license plates with myriad other religious symbols. That would open up a Pandora's box. Is South Carolina ready to create religious plates with a Star of David? How about an Islamic star and crescent? Or a Hindu Omkar? Or, maybe a Jainist Sathiyo, which includes a swastika?
This isn't the first time that South Carolina legislators have made an ill-advised decision regarding license plates. The last one -- authorizing an official pro-life tag -- was struck down by the Fourth Circuit Court, which ruled that by "granting access to the license plate forum only to those who share its viewpoint, South Carolina has provided pro-life supporters with an instrument for expressing their position and has distorted the specialty license plate forum in favor of one message, the pro-life message."
As Marc Stern, the American Jewish Congress' general counsel, pointed out in a letter urging Sanford to veto the bill: "Substitute 'Christians' for 'pro-life,' and that holding foretells the inevitable invalidation of S.B. 1329."
Time and again, we see legislators who choose to ignore that the United States does not have a state religion, but is a pluralistic nation with citizens of myriad faiths -- or no faith, at all.
This bill should be challenged, and struck down.
