General Road and Highway Discussion

[danbrotherston]

Yeah, its a reasonable thing for people to get offended about (imo) and there's no way to know its his name when driving.  

If people want to complain about his name being offensive when he gives them his birth certificate, that's a different story.  The context is much clearer there and its obvious its just his name.

That’s why I considered the complaint well-founded. But almost anything could be offensive — the name of a murderer, a rude word in a different language, the name of a location where somebody was victimized in some way, …. And don’t forget that we saw in the ASIMIL8 case that apparently standard English words are now offensive. So I think if it’s not blatantly offensive then providing a valid, non-offensive justification for the plate should be sufficient keep the plate. Remember, even under the current rules he had it for years before anybody complained. So clearly it’s not that bad (or wasn’t, until the current President was elected!).

Yes, anything can be offensive to someone, but that isn't the issue here, the issue is, is it offensive to most or a specific group of people without any context.

And again, we're talking about personalized plates, which are neither a right, nor a particularly valuable or important freedom.  The freedom of not living in a culture which has apparently offensive or derogatory statements on license plates is a much more important freedom.  It has a much bigger impact on the quality of life of many more people.

And, I'm perfectly happy with the current system, where we reject the most obvious ones and then take a very hard line when there are complaints.  Seems perfectly reasonable to me.