{Originally published on greeblemonkey}

Basically, here’s the deal. Seeing as June and July have been a complete BLUR, I have really not paid any attention to my family, much less the news till right about, oh, 60 seconds ago. So, when Bryan brought up the South Carolina license plate controversy, he got a big. fat. blank. stare.

After the obligatory Fill-Aimee-In-On-The-Stuff-She-Has-Been-Missing Conversation, and a few Google searches, I started to get mad. REALLY mad. In a nutshell, South Carolina has authorized a vanity license plate with the words “I Believe” plus the image of a stained glass window and a CROSS over top of it. Clearly an indication that “I Believe” in Jesus Christ. CLEARLY a violation of the separation of church and state.

Have they lost their minds?

But before I go any further with my indignation over this situation, whatever happened to the POINT of a license plate in the first place? WHY does every state have 15,000 variations of design? I know this sounds crazy coming from a graphic designer, but here lies the place where my design sensibilities hit the road, Jack. The PURPOSE of a license plate is for you, me and any random police officer to IDENTIFY a car at a glance. How am I supposed to do that when someone can purchase their own oh-so-special Buffy The Vampire Slayer license plates? What happened to ONE STATE, ONE PLATE? This *is* like an official testament from the holy mother of all departmental clusterfracks, the Department of Motor Vehicles, right? So, not only are you going to make it harder for me to identify the person who just sideswiped me, you are also going to make it harder for me to get through that everlasting line because Granny Smith can’t decide between the University of Florida or Florida State University - you see, she has a grandson at both schools, don’t you know! And maybe she could just get one plate from each and put them at either end of the car??? Wouldn’t that be special!? OH, SHUT UP.

One state, one plate.

And NONE of them should be religious.