Amber Yust Changed Her Driver’s License Gender And All She Got Was a Lousy Letter of Abomination
After reading about Amber Yust’s awful DMV experience — where the transgender San Francisco woman received a letter from a DMV staffer calling her an “abomination” after trying to get her license renewed — Queerty commenter the crustybastard suggested, “Lawyer up.” She did. And she’s suing.
Yust, 23, merely wanted to change her official gender from “male” to “female,” a process that should be as straightforward as checking a box. For the most part it was; the DMV staffer raised no objections during the process. But later that day Yust received a letter from the employee, identified by her lawyers as Thomas Demartini, saying that being gay (not trans?) was “an abomination that leads to hell.” She also received a DVD, the San Francisco Chronicle reports, “from a fundamentalist church warning of eternal damnation for anyone ‘possessed by demons’ of homosexuality. The DMV employee’s letter had referred her to the church’s website as a source of ‘critical information for your salvation.’ What’s more, the DMV had kept the employee on in 2009 even after he refused to process another transgender woman’s name-change application, Yust said in a damage claim filed with the state, the precursor to a lawsuit.” That church is the Most Holy Family Monastery, and the package “included “a grisly leaflet showing hearts torn from bodies.”
And because the DMV employee used Yust’s personal information to contact her at home, Yust says not only was she scared, but her privacy was criminally violated. So far the DMV hasn’t responded to the suit, though two weeks after Yust received the letter a DMV administrator wrote her a letter of apology and said the incident would be a “learning experience for all employees.”
It certainly will be, when the DMV settles for an undisclosed amount.
[photo: SF Chronicle]
Good for Amber getting a lawyer. I hope whoever you hired puts the screws to them good for this.
See people, this is what religion does. It hurts. It kills. All the imagined dangers of “immorality” pale in comparison to the real harm blind faith causes on a daily basis.
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QUEERTY wrote, ‘So far the DMV hasn’t responded to the suit, though two weeks after Yust received the letter a DMV administrator wrote her a letter of apology and said the incident would be a “learning experience for all employees.”‘
QUEERTY got it a bit scrambled. The article http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....1GOICK.DTL stated, ‘Demartini was also the DMV employee who spurned a transgender woman’s application to change her name and gender in August 2009 and told her that “God will send you to hell.” A DMV regional administrator apologized to the woman for the employee’s “unprofessional and disrespectful behavior” in a letter two weeks later and promised to use the incident as a “learning experience for all employees.”‘
In other words, there was a written apology for an incident involving the same jerk in 2009, but that letter of apology went to someone else.
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“two weeks after Yust received the letter a DMV administrator wrote her a letter of apology and said the incident would be a “learning experience for all employees.”
It certainly will be, when the DMV settles for an undisclosed amount.’
LOL, I agree, it certainly will be. Good luck Amber, my very best to you, and I’m sorry you had to go through all the crap.
@randy: Oh, why even bother, you worthless piece of &*%$&*
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@missanthrope: Oh shut up, Randy. I doubt your a cover model yourself.
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Has anyone else looked up the Most Holy Family Monastery? It’s a sedevacantist Catholic splinter. They believe that every pope sine John XXIII has been an anti-pope, a pretender to the papacy. The movement denounces modernism and Vatican II.
These are crazy people.
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“What’s more, the DMV had kept the employee on in 2009 even after he refused to process another transgender woman’s name-change application”
So the DMV is liable too for keeping this guy on – and not watching him to make sure he doesn’t violate the law again.
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This is to Randy, you are an ignorant nasty person. Amber can is beautiful inside and out. She will only become more beautiful and you will only become MORE IGNORANT. Right on Amber. You are doing what you need to do for yourself. Keep on girl, keep on.
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someone’s gonna get some cool cash for xmas! Is she single???? ;)
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Amber, darling, I don’t know where you are, but I’m thinking good thoughts about you! I’m so sorry that this happened, and I’m so glad for your courage! Stay strong! There is a lot of love in this world, sadly there’s just some people who are too stupid to accept it.
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I’d like to add, I draw pornography for a living, have done some fetish modeling, and I have never been able to figure out why one human being feels they have the right to suggest even in the slightest how another human being should appear physically. I’ve also worked in a nursing home, and we all get pretty ugly in the end. You’d just better hope the people there don’t judge you on your look.
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Along with the civil aspect of this freaking nightmare, there must be crimminal statues that absolute scumbag violated in taking confidential information and passing it to another entity……….