An Indiana gay-youth advocacy group said it will seek legal help and fight to keep its specialty license plate despite opposition from lawmakers and conservative activists.
Indiana Youth group director Mary Byrne told The Associated Press that the organization's board decided Tuesday night to explore its legal options but hoped to avoid a lawsuit. She said she has been contacted by numerous Indiana lawyers looking to represent her group, but declined to give out their names.
"It took a long time to get the plates and we are not planning on letting go of them easily," Byrne said in a statement Wednesday.
The state Bureau of Motor Vehicles announced last week that the youth group lost its right to have specialty license plates by trading low-digit plates for contributions. That came after 20 Republican state senators complained to the agency about the group's handling of the plate.
The group maintains it is a common practice among Indiana's some 100 organizations with specialty plates to give out low-numbered plates as thank-you gifts.
Indiana nonprofits can receive $25 out of every $40 a motorist spends on a specialty plate. In 2011, the state sold more than 420,000 such plates, netting more than $11 million for nonprofits.
Some lawmakers who said there were too many specialty plates worked on an overhaul that would have eliminated the youth group's plate and several others, but the youth group claimed it was the real target. The bill was scrapped after its sponsor said the debate had become too political.
Just before the end of the session, 20 Republican senators signed a letter to the BMV asking for an investigation of the youth group's plate, then last week the BMV announced it was dropping the plate, along with plates for the Greenways Foundation and the Indiana 4-H Foundation.
Eric Miller, founder of Advance America, one of the conservative groups that lobbied lawmakers behind the scenes to ban the youth group's license plate, accused the group of promoting sex between children as young as 12.
"What they do with little children is illegal and immoral," Miller told the AP Wednesday.
"That is an outright lie," Byrne said when asked about Miller's accusations. The group holds classes talking about safe sex, relationships and dating, but does not talk about sex acts themselves or promote sexual relationships, she said. Byrne added that her group asks for parental consent from all children who attend its classes.
But Miller said he and many lawmakers believe that a private group should not be discussing sex at all with children as young as 12. One class that the youth group put on about promoting safe sex particularly angered lawmakers, he said.
The youth group said revenue from the license plates funds programming for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth around the state.
"It's more than just a plate or revenue," Byrne said in the youth group's statement. "Many leaders send LGBT youth the message that they are somehow less than. The plate is one way, a visible sign that support is out there."
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Good ole' Obamacare. Thanks liberals and those who didn't bother to vote.
Yes. Blame those who were too lazy to go vote Obama out and those who voted him in again. That's my take on it. I know folks won't get it on the left. OK. Start berating me now!
Serioulsy, people are AGINST this project? Most communities would be salivating over a project like this. You'd rather have an empty eye-sore gas station and shacks posing as apartments? This project is exactly what BR needs. BUILD IT MR MAYOR. And yes, I am a BR resident, and have been for 20 years.
As a St. Vincent employee of over 20 years, I am saddened and disheartened by this announcement. Unfortunately, as the healthcare "industry" continues on this political and corporate path, all that St. Vincent Hospital has stood for spiritually for its employees and this community is being sucked dry. I know it truly has no choice. It is not just Obamacare or just competition or just any single thing. This trend started long before I was even born when the government became involved in healthcare and it became an "industry." I grieve for those who will lose their jobs, one of whom may be me, but I also grieve for this hospital which I have served for over 20 years. May God give us and it the grace to withstand the future of healthcare.
Why do people constantly harp on this issue and act ignorant about what a city population measures? A city's population is the city's population. There is no argument or debate about it. If you want to measure the density of a city--measure it. If you want to measure the size of a metropolitan area, then measure the metropolitan population. City boundaries cover different sized areas--and they always have (though the disparity has probably increased since about 1900 or so when more cities began annexing their surrounding communities). For example, San Francisco only covers 49 square miles while Houston cover nearly 600 square miles. No one argues about the population rankings of either city even though they clearly cover extremely different sized areas. Indianapolis is the 13 largest city by population in the U.S. That is a fact. While the population of a metropolitan area may give you a better sense of how large a community is, as noted, even metro areas can vary widely in the size of geographic area they cover--so that is not a perfect comparison either.