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From the New York Times:

When a neo-Nazi group called the National Socialist Movement volunteered last year to clean a Missouri highway, and get official recognition for it in the form of an Adopt-a-Highway sign, state officials felt powerless to refuse. So they took a rather clever tack.

…Officials are renaming the stretch of highway near Springfield that the organization cleans after Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who fled Nazi Germany and became a prominent Jewish theologian and civil rights advocate in the United States.

I hope they put up a great big sign announcing the new name.

I do have mixed feelings about this, though. Adopt-A-Highway is used to save millions of dollars, but at the expense of appearing to grant governmental approval to the sponsors. I smile at the thought of an adult bookstore being acknowledged with a sign in the heart of the Bible Belt, but the recent case in California of a Minuteman militia group sponsoring a stretch of border highway makes me extremely uneasy. While Missouri found a way to make its position clear, other localities have not been as creative, or as perhaps as lucky.

This is part of a larger fiscal trend that has resulted in public buildings nationwide bearing the name of corporate sponsors. Qualcomm Stadium, Safeco Field, and Metropolitan Life Convention Center take facilities erected with public funds, and in exchange for saving a small percentage of the total cost, slaps an advertisement on them. Even sponsorship by the local Lutheran Church compromises the sacred split between church and state and violates, if not the letter, then the spirit of the law.

It would be better, I think, to downsize a project, or pay for less frequent litter control, than to sell out our civic responsibilities to the first comer with money in hand. For Adopt-A-Highway, all the sponsors give up is a couple of hours four times a year. Is it worth it to give the appearance of official sanction to all who ask?

I don’t think so. How about you?

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