Between a ROCK and a license plate

The state budget crisis that has been growing steadily for the last two years has had one salutary effect: it has dropped to the bottom of legislators' priority list the unconstitutional proposal for "In God We Trust" license plates.

Now a religious group has sued Kentucky to demand not only that the state produce the god-walloping plates, but that it also pay profits from the plate to said freakazoids.

A Kentucky anti-pornography group has sued the state Transportation Cabinet and two legislators for turning down its application to sponsor a specialty license plate with the motto “In God We Trust.”

The Louisville-based Reclaim Our Culture Kentuckiana claims in a lawsuit filed in Franklin Circuit Court that the Transportation Cabinet erred in 2008 when it denied its application for the license plate.

In its application, ROCK said it would use money from sales of the plate to raise awareness about harm caused by pornography and the sex industry and to help people hurt or victimized by porn, sexual predators and the sex business.

If approved, the plate would cost $34, but buyers could volunteer to add $10 that would go to ROCK.

In the cabinet’s response, attorney Allan Weiss of Louisville asked the court to dismiss the complaint because ROCK promotes religion, making the organization ineligible to sponsor a specialty license plate under state law.

Read the whole thing.

My last-word rant on freakazoid license plates from last summer is here. It's ironic but predictable that the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet will go to court to prevent a religious group from sponsoring such plates, but has no problem with the state itself profiting from promoting religion.

It doesn't matter who sponsors or even who profits from the plates. What matters is the unconstitutional injection of a religious message into a basic government service that non-freakazoid citizens cannot escape.

And no, "In God We Trust" is not the "national motto." IGWT was stamped on coins as a Civil War-era sop thrown to slave owners, and hypocritically promoted by McCarthyites to intimidate freethinkers.

The national motto is E pluribus unum, "out of many, one." Put that on the license plates.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....