The ACLU will Love this!

Indiana's bright blue "In God We Trust" license plates may have just begun to hit the streets, but the plan behind them was born in last year's legislature.

The law creating the plate was sponsored by Rep. Woody Burton, R-Greenville, a conservative member of the House who has supported a state constitutional ban on gay marriage and has spoken favorably of teaching intelligent design alongside evolution in public schools.

As Bureau of Motor Vehicles officials pointed out, the bill also received wide bipartisan support in the House and Senate when it passed last year.

Patrons leaving the BMV office in Hobart, which has issued 2,867 of the new plates since January, were torn on whether they were making a religious statement, a patriotic statement or they just liked the flag-draped design better than Indiana's pale green on green field design.

"I'm Catholic and I'm American so it represents the things I stand for," said Nick Bavanic of Crown Point.

It is also the only game in town for the driver who wants a new license plate this year, instead of a renewal sticker for the old plate. Indiana changes its license plates every five years.

The green field plate is in its fourth year. The new law authorized "In God We Trust" to go into distribution starting in 2007 as an alternative to the standard plate, Cook said.

It doesn't come with an additional fee like other specialty plates -- Indiana University, Purdue University or Kids First would be some examples.

The "In God We Trust" plate doesn't carry an extra fee -- not even the processing fee the BMV usually receives when it issues the other speciality plates.

In fact, BMV is absorbing the $3.69 cost of producing each plate. The money comes out of the Motor Vehicle Highway Fund, Cook said.

It's the same fund which pays for the state police and helps fund road repairs at the local, county and state level. The biggest contributor is the state tax on gasoline, according to state budget.

Though the BMV is producing the plate in large numbers, the state isn't foisting it on drivers, Cook said.

"There is no effort to push it," he said.

Hobart ran out of the new plates Tuesday morning. Drivers had wait for the UPS shipment to arrive.

Patsy Davis of Merrillville carried to plates out to her car. She said, for her at least, it wasn't a religious statement. Though she liked that the design was patriotic, she mainly liked that it was a little more interesting than her old plate.

"Honestly, I thought it was pretty," she said.