Opinion: Y-H8-A-PL8?

Before they made a quick about-face, officials at the license plate office in Tallahassee had put atheism on a par with racial epithets and dirty words.

A supervisor in the Bureau of Titles and Registrations had revoked the "ATHEIST" vanity license plate of Steve Miles, a University of Florida electrical engineer and vice president of Atheists of Florida. The letter Miles received from the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles said the word was "obscene or objectionable" and his plate was canceled.

After a report by St. Petersburg Times staff writer Kathryn Wexler, the director of the Division of Motor Vehicles quickly reversed the judgment. A department spokesman also said new procedures will be put in place to provide for a review of any close decisions on license tag revocations in the future. That policy change should help prevent future mistakes. However, this episode suggests the department needs to go further and educate its employees on why their personal religious views can't be the basis for censoring license plates.

The department said its initial decision to yank the plate was prompted by a complaint signed by 10 people. Well, what if 10 people wrote in their objections to the "Choose Life" specialty plate many abortion opponents display? Or what if someone was sporting a "GoNoles" plate? Would the department dare revoke that plate if Gator fans complained?

Some Floridians harbor intolerance toward others who don't believe as they do, but the state has no business going along. The department is constitutionally bound to be neutral on matters of religion and spirituality. If the license tag "ALL4GOD" is acceptable, which it has been for the last 15 years, then "ATHEIST" should be equally so.

The controversy raises the question of why the state issues personalized plates at all. In a questionable use of time, the department has an employee who spends part of each day screening personalized plates for taboo words or subjects. The employee uses medical dictionaries, Spanish-English dictionaries and lists of slang words in an effort to discover any hidden references to sex and sex organs. Maybe Florida should just get out of the vanity license plate -- and censorship -- business.

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