S. Dakota Gay Group Gets Highway Sign, for a While

Seeking to defuse a lawsuit, Gov. William Janklow said Friday that the state will put up a sign requested by a homosexual group as part of the state’s Adopt-A-Highway program.

But Janklow also said all signs in the program, approximately 1,000 of them, will be taken down by the end of the year. They will be replaced with generic signs noting that concerned citizens who care about keeping the roads clean are responsible for the work.

“I do not think government should be used to offend people,” Janklow said. He said the state Web site will list all groups involved in the program to clean up roads and highways.

State Department of Transportation officials had said the Sioux Empire Gay and Lesbian Coalition did not qualify for the sign because it is an advocacy group. The group responded this week with a federal lawsuit against the state, seeking to have the sign erected and to receive monetary damages.

Janklow had said he might eliminate the program rather than see it go to court. Both sides claimed partial victory after his announcement.

Coalition President Barb Himmel-Roberts said the group will clean up litter even after its new sign is taken down.

“It is [good] as far as I’m concerned,” she said. She said the lawsuit may be withdrawn.

Rob Regier, director of the conservative South Dakota Family Policy Council, said the decision was a fair compromise.

“Thankfully he didn’t have to give in to the legal bullying of the ACLU,” Regier said.

Earlier this year, Missouri lost a court battle to ban the Ku Klux Klan from participating in the state’s Adopt-A-Highway cleanup program. The U.S. Supreme Court refused a plea to overturn a ruling by the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals that said the Constitution’s free-speech guarantee “protects everyone, even those with viewpoints as thoroughly obnoxious as the Klan.”

Janklow said he would never post a sign for the KKK. He also said he wouldn’t post the Klan name on the state Web site.

“And if that becomes a hassle, then the Web site will be shut down,” he said.

Janklow said he has received more hate mail on the issue than on any matter that has come before him as governor. He reiterated that he does not have a personal dislike of homosexuals.

“The issue is not a gay and lesbian issue,” he said. “I do believe God makes people a lot of ways.”