There is nothing wrong with the Grand Canyon State - well, at least not the phrase, which shows up on every standard Arizona license plate.
But some groups think that space below the license plate number should be up for grabs.
Last week, the Arizona Life Coalition sued the state License Plate Commission. The anti-abortion group argues that it was denied freedom of expression and due process after its license plate proposal, "Choose Life," was turned down by the commission.
If there is a political message encoded in "The Grand Canyon State," it is not one readily obvious to us or to the average Arizona motorist, who is more focused on running red lights while talking on a cell phone. We cannot say the same for "Choose Life."
License plates should not be platforms for ideological proselytizing.
Of course, we Sun Devils always feel a little pitter-pat when we pull up behind a car with Sparky on its plates.
This bit of license plate diversity is due to the 1999 law that allows the state to produce specialty license plates for non-profit organizations that serve the Arizona community without discriminating or advertising products.
We think that this law goes too far and that the Arizona License Plate Commission should rein in the specialty plate operation altogether.
Because a portion of the proceeds from the license purchase is returned to the organizations, this law is loaded with prickly issues about state backing of political agendas. After all, if the ALC succeeds in arguing that license plates are a forum for free speech, the state will have no recourse to deny other controversial slogans from showing up in your headlights.
Think about it: Racial supremacists could sport the KKK on the back of SLKs. And what if the targets of the "Mean People Suck" slogan got together and took revenge with a really, really mean license plate?
But aside from the ideological implications at issue, specialty plating is also impractical and costly.
Varied designs make plates harder to read for police officers who rely on immediate license recognition to do their jobs properly.
Furthermore, adding plate options raises production costs for the state, which receives no economic recompense for the additional license displays.
For these reasons, we believe that "Choose Life" and all other slogans should be kept off our plates and reapplied with sticky backing, à la bumper stickers.
After all, what happened to the all-American tradition of bumper sticker propaganda? We think there are too many waxed and bare bumpers on Arizona roads today; restricting, if not eliminating, specialty license plates would force the good folks of the Grand Canyon State to return to bumper-sticker kitsch and speak their mind at taillight level once more.
So far, eight states have added "Choose Life" to available slogans for motorists. We at The State Press hope that Arizona does not become the ninth.
