Your favorite band’s name is emblazoned across a T-shirt you bought at their concert. A button on your backpack proclaims your affiliation with a political party. Your license plate says “Choose Life,” and the extra $35 you paid for the plate goes to anti-abortion counseling organizations, in addition to giving you a cute plate featuring a pelican carrying a blanketed baby in its beak.

While each of these tactics is irrefutably a measure of self-expression, only one of them enjoys government sponsorship. And it’s pretty safe to say Louisiana legislators aren’t clad in Radiohead and Tool T-shirts, attaching Green Party buttons to their briefcases.

Louisiana, along with Alabama, Florida, Hawaii, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina has passed legislation allowing the “Choose Life” message on specialty license plates put out by the state. Specialty plates are slightly more expensive than regular plates, with the extra money going to a state-chosen cause. Buying the plates is entirely optional. Some states have wildlife themes on plates to help fund state parks, others allow sports fans to drive around with the emblem of their favorite team affixed to their bumper. The “Choose Life” plate advocates adoption and anti-abortion counseling.

Those campaigning for the specialty plates have called them a form of free speech, inferring that license plates have the potential to become a public forum where the state cannot discriminate simply based on viewpoint.

But after the “Choose Life” plates were approved by the Louisiana Legislature, pro-choice groups decided that they, too, wanted a specialty plate to express their beliefs. However, an attempt to create a “Choose Choice” specialty plate was defeated last year in the openly anti-abortion Louisiana legislature.

The “Choose Life” message has the same right to be displayed on license plates as environmental issues and sports teams.

Problems arise, however, when a forum is provided for this controversial debate that doesn’t allow equal access to all sides. That’s not free speech.

Also, as the ACLU has pointed out, once you provide access to one group, you must provide access to all, from the Ku Klux Klan to the National Rifle Association.

Expression should not be dependent on the whim or belief of your current representative, and if license plates are truly to be an open forum, all groups should be able to apply for plates of their own design. Until then, states should stay out of the license plate endorsement business, including the Iowa legislature, which is currently considering state sponsorship of a “Choose Life” plate.

Plaster your car with bumper stickers and wear T-shirts and buttons that proclaim your beliefs — but don’t deny others the right to do the same.

Editorial Board: Cavan Reagan, Amber Billings, Ayrel Clark, Charlie Weaver, Katie List