There are two kind of religious oppression.

1] Where religious people are oppressed

and 2] Where religious people oppress those of another (or no) faith

I believe our constitution seeks to bar the government from facilitating EITHER kind.

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Christians of this type are the most insecure people the world has ever seen. The constant need to shout their Christianity is the very same display that causes cynics like me to question them as true Christians.

Isn't their God always with them? Don't their works and deeds show their belief better than yet another cheap trinket proclaiming one's allegiance to a certain God?

I demand Flying Spaghetti Monster license plates!!!

on the back of their car! LOL!

It seems like every generations of Evangelicals simply MUST toy with the idea that GOD wants Theocracy in America. I think it is a direct off-shoot of the ideas they preach. They suspect that the reason other Theocracy has failed is because the TRUE God was not at the center. They flirt with the idea that God would keep Christian Protestants on track.

Where's the "oppression" here? We've had "In God We Trust" license plates in this state for 6 or 7 years....they are optional and must be requested. For petty and insecure aetheists, there is a "In Reason We Trust" license plate available too. Seriously. So whats your beef?

The idea of religious preference - but here goes: Simply the fact that it is easier or different for Christians to get a certain plate is Illegal. Wait and see.

As the article noted, the Florida legislature rejected the idea.

Honestly, I could care less what people put on their license plates. If Christians are so proud of their religion that they want the whole world to know, who am I to stand in their way? BTW, isn't pride one of the seven deadly sins? Oops.

Don't see it passing a legal challenge with regards to Separation of Church & State unless the State lets other religions have their own plate too.

It is no more "illegal" than it is for you to force your students to put up with your liberal views, as I am sure they are required to do.

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This is a classic gambit on the part of right wing theocrats.

They find some symbolic legislation like this - govt. sponsored license plates that proclaim their particular faith - a measure that they know is popular but blatantly unconstitutional.

Then when it gets struck down, they will whine about "activist" courts and secularists who are "anti-Christian" - as if they are somehow victims in all of this nonsense.

The current crop is pretty scary...Parsely was it, saying the US was founded to destroy Islam. We have always been a "god fearing" nation, that much is true, but the nation didn't have a "unitary" God, but a selfless one. Spiritualists, Amish, Mennonites, Mormons, Quakers...7th Day Adventists....all realized that keeping government away was a good idea.

Mass Communication and the Fundamental Evangelists changed quite a bit of that philosophy, preaching their special brand of holy judgment to millions on the T&V...

I appreciate your comments. I do take issue with your saying this is not oppression:

Oppression is the act of using power to empower and/or privilege a group at the expense of disempowering, marginalizing, silencing, and subordinating another. Note: Oppression does not need established organizational support; it can be rendered on a much smaller individual scale. It is particularly closely associated with nationalism and derived social systems, wherein identity is built by antagonism to the other. The term itself derives from the idea of being "weighted down."

As I said, aetheists can get their own license plates. Make the fees the same for the Christian license plates and its even.

I don't care for 'em, and don't think the State needs to be in the designer license biz at all. But I don't see how this "oppreses" anyone, franky...

If thats the case, that they just like to hold up a hoop, well, you and the other lefties in this thread prove that you are willing to jump through it time, and time again....

I think it does depend though on how one looks at "oppression."

The reason I wouldn't consider it "oppression" is that there is nothing coercive about the act of displaying a particular license plate. Of course that was the same argument that advocates of prayer in school make - "we're not forcing anybody to pray or to adopt our views, so what's the big deal?"

And the big deal is something that you have hit upon - measures like these subordinate others on the basis of their own faith and conscience.

For me, the important point is that a measure does not have to be coercive or directly "oppressive" to run afoul of our Constitutional separation of church and state. This one clearly does.