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Free Speech on the Back of a Car

Note to readers: The following Roger Simon column was first published in May 1997.

WASHINGTON — Freedom of speech has become such a pain in this country, I'm surprised we still put up with it at all.

Consider the state of Virginia, which keeps a dozen people on the state payroll to make sure that free speech doesn't get too wild and crazy when it comes to serious things like license plates.

The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles maintains a "word committee" to make sure nobody gets vanity plates with any words or phrases that are "obscene, profane or vulgar" or "socially and ethnically insensitive or disparaging."

The committee, which is armed with several foreign-language dictionaries so no one can get naughty in another tongue, reviews requests for plates and then accepts or rejects them.

About one in 10 license plates in Virginia is a vanity plate because it only costs an extra $10 to get one. Most of these plates have the person's name on them or the names of their college mascots or those semi-cute things like "MY TOY" or "I SUE."

The word committee rejects very few plates because few people have the nerve to request outright obscenities or other offensive language. But profanity, words that refer to acts of violence, sexual innuendo or "anything excretory" are rejected.

Two years ago, however, a particularly unpleasant individual by the name of Ryan Maziarka requested a license plate that read "ZYKLON B" — and nobody on the word committee caught it.

As some people know, Zyklon B was the poison gas used by the Nazis to kill Jews and others in the Holocaust. Maziarka, 21, was a member of a skinhead group and was convicted of spray painting slurs on a mostly black church in 1994. He was sentenced to five years in prison, with three of them suspended.

Maziarka told a reporter he had the plate on his car because "I want people to ask me what it (Zyklon B) is, to tell them it's a big lie.'' Maziarka does not believe the Holocaust ever took place.

In any case, somebody noticed his license plate recently and brought it to the attention of the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League, which sent a letter of protest to the Virginia DMV last week.

"If you put yourself in the shoes of a Holocaust survivor or the child of a Holocaust survivor, and you're driving down the highway and you see this plate, you can imagine the effect it would have," the director of the group said.

Which is a classic free-speech issue.

Do we ban speech because some people may not like it? There is a huge difference between spray painting a word on someone's church, which is clearly a crime, and wanting to put a word on your own car. And what if Maziarka printed "Zyklon B" on a bumper sticker and put it on his car? How could anybody stop him then?

Virginia, the home of such free-speech advocates as Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Patrick Henry, knew just what to do: It immediately revoked Maziarka's license plate.

"Apparently, I lost all civil rights in this community," Maziarka told a reporter.

OK, so big deal. Who cares about an insect like Maziarka, who wants a certain license plate in order to make somebody else feel bad?

But now, consider another Virginia license-plate case from a few months ago.

Two women who are lesbians got a license plate that read "2 DYKES" and put it on their Jeep Cherokee and happily rode around for two years.

But then, a few months ago, they got a letter from the Virginia DMV telling them to give the plate back because the plate could be "interpreted in a way that would make it obscene, profane or vulgar. "

But, the women protested, since we are lesbians, we can call ourselves "dykes" if we want to, just like black people can use the n-word, or Jewish people can tell Jewish jokes, or Irish people can tell Irish jokes, and so forth.

"Who are we insulting — ourselves?" one of the women said. "Within the gay and lesbian community, (dyke) is a very positive term. ... It's weird for people who aren't in the group to decide what is offensive."

But the word committee was not impressed with that argument, and it told the women they could not use that word on a license plate. The women could use "LESBIAN" on a license plate, however, the word committee said.

If this all seems a bit silly, it is. But that's what happens when you try to tinker with free speech.

The women should request a plate that says "2 DIKES" — and tell the word committee they are from Holland.

To find out more about Roger Simon, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.