In March 2014, Star Tribune reporter Mark Brunswick wrote in Women push for their own vets’ plate:
A proposal to provide specialty license plates for women veterans in Minnesota is slowly making its way through the legislative process. It has stalled in previous years, but advocates remain hopeful.
Specialty plates have been a subject of debate in the Minnesota Legislature over the years, and lawmakers generally have been resistant to adding many more incarnations.
But advocates for these license plates argue that the plates would go a long way toward removing the invisibility that many women veterans feel, even among the well-meaning.
“This is not a vanity plate, it’s a values plate,” said veterans advocate Trista Matascastillo, a former Marine and a former member of the Minnesota National Guard.
It’s not uncommon for women veterans to feel slighted, even as the number of women veterans continues to increase. In Minnesota, there are an estimated 29,000 women vets, about 8 percent of the state’s veteran population.
At a recent hearing, West Point grad and Army and National Guard veteran Jill Troutner made the case for the plates as something visual that can’t be mistaken as recognition of anyone’s service but their own.
“Everyone notices a veteran’s plate, everyone assumes that it belongs to a man,” she told legislators. “For me, this license plate is a statement of value, that Minnesota, my state, values my contribution, my sacrifices and my patriotism in a highly visible way that will eliminate the need to explain to others that I am a military veteran.”
Minnesota was one of the first states to propose the plates, and now nine other states have adopted similar plates. . . .
And what would those other states be? West Virginia created the first plate in 2005, with Kentucky issuing "a Woman Veteran' sticker, which could be placed over the county name at the bottom of the Kentucky plate."
Tennessee passed a "woman vet" plate law in 2007. Nevada started issuing a woman vet plate in 2011, while Scott Walker's bastion of political correctness (otherwise known as Wisconsin) started the practice in 2012. Women veterans in New Mexico can order specialty plates from the Santa Fe office, whereas obtaining one in Illinois isn't restricted to one office. Governor Perry signed a Texas woman veteran plate law in 2011. Arizona has them.
The Minnesota House passed HF1916, 118-0 on April 28, 2014.
It's not exactly a "politically correct" thing--with uberconservative male governors like Perry and Walker signing the bills into law--although you'd think so from listening to the offense taken by Senators Carrie Ruud, Dan Hall and a few others before HF1916, the Senate version of the bill, was passed 54-9.
How bad was it? Staunch conservative Senator Warren Limmer had to step in to share stories of how women veterans should up for Veterans Day specials at restaurants, where staff keep thanking their non-veteran husbands for their service. Bluestem has seen and heard about these sort of things happening to Iraq War women veterans we know, so we understood where the women veterans who lobbied for the plates (and the veterans groups who supported them) were coming from.
The Uptake pulled the video of the debate for us. It's jaw-dropping at times.
Image: A Wisconsin woman veteran license plate.
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I took note of Julianne Ortman’s smirk and crossed arms as Gazelka spoke. Yeah, she’d be a dignified replacement for Al Franken.
Posted by: Susan | May 06, 2014 at 07:18 AM