State Senator Brophy, R-Wray, is in a kind of dialog with the American Civil Liberties Union and, like Miss California, is making sad entertainment of his wrestling with the ideas behind free speech and civil liberties.
Last month he thought it was high humor that the ACLU offered to defend the right of a Colorado driver to on her license plate proclaim her love for tofu (“instead of real food” says Brophy). As we reported, the the woman’s proposed plate, ILVTOFU, was rejected the Department of Revenue as potentially obscene. In the age of texting, the DOR has decided the letters F and U can not appear together in that order.
The ACLU suggested the government DOR rethink its FU rules so as not to needlessly infringe on citizen expression.
Brophy mocked the ACLU for this at his blog and revealing a muddle-headedness on his grasp of the law.
Yes, the same ACLU that goes all over the country trying to find the Ten Commandments in a public place so they can insist that the Ten Commandments be taken down are about to argue that FU should be allowed on license plates in Colorado.
How about this plate: ACLUSUX, or maybe one that puts the new letters [new letters?] F and U on a plate with ACLU?
ACLU spokeswoman Cathryn L. Hazouri contacted the senator in response to say the organization would defend his right to express those thoughts on a license plate should he so desire.
Huh? This confused Brophy, spurring him into Carrie Bradshaw-style reverie.
I just have to wonder though, if I could fit the 10 Commandments onto a license plate, would the ACLU defend my right to park my car at the state capitol with that plate on it? I suspect the answer is no, as they seem mostly to be interested in defending politically correct or obscene “speech”.
They really should rename themselves the PCACLU.
Wrong again. Of course the ACLU would defend Brophy’s right to decorate his car any way he liked — with the Ten Commandments or with passages from Revelations or with excerpts from his blog or god help us with his tweets!
The ACLU regularly argues for the right to display the Ten Commandments in public. It only argues against their display in government spaces where the display may intimidate and so crimp the expression of Americans doing their government business. It’s the difference between public expression, which the ACLU guards, and government expression, which the ACLU monitors. That’s what the ACLU explains all over the web and in court filings, anyway, for anyone interested to look.
Will an aide please explain to Brophy that the ACLU defends Christian expression all the time. Explain too that it wasn’t elected officials or journalists but the ACLU that pried the lid off of the Bush Administration torture policies and it is the ACLU that will eventually compel the Obama Administration to bring those involved in extraordinary rendition and the torture-taxi trade to justice. The ACLU doesn’t flinch and it doesn’t stop at license-plate expression and its mission has nothing to do with political correctness.
