Choose logic

I'm the middle child of five, all girls. The oldest four of us are very close in age, and the youngest is seven years younger than I am. So, our family dynamic was first like that of a basketball team, and then later like that of a basketball team ganging up on a toddler because we were bigger than her. Except that basketball players are adults, and we were children right at that age where each of us genuinely felt that we were the center of the universe and SHE'S ON MY SIDE OF THE CAR SEAT!!!

Which is to say, my parents had to be master mediators. If you have more than one kid, you're probably very familiar with those bitter disputes that end with "...then NO ONE gets to ride in the front seat/pick the TV show/hang the Patrick Swayze poster on her side of the room."

It's basic Fairness 101. When you have two or more opposing entities, you give them all the same privileges, or you give all of them no privileges at all.

And consider that my introduction to what might be the simplest case the ACLU has ever argued. This year, our GOP-led General Assembly continued its waste-no-time approach to its first controlling majority in more than a century and ok'd a state-issued anti-choice specialty license plate. The plate, reading "Choose Life," would raise money ($15 of every $25) for the Carolina Pregnancy Care Fellowship, whose website says it is "the legally designated agency for disbursement of plate funds." CPCF openly advocates against abortion rights... and that's their prerogative. It's a free country.

The problem is that the General Assembly had previously rejected six attempts to issue a plate benefiting a pro-choice organization. Now, personally I don't think the DMV should be in the business of shilling for ANY non-profit group, but if it is going to do that, logic dictates that it be objective.

Not just logic, though. The law, too. The ACLU argues that the state can't facilitate speech by one side and not the other. And this week a federal judge agreed, issuing an injunction that prevents the "Choose Life" plates from being offered.

CPCF and its supporters have every right to buy and display their plates, but not if every other advocacy group on the same issue is silenced. The government doesn't get to play favorites.