As if going to the DMV wasn't harrowing enough, Amber Yust, a 23-year-old software engineer, had a particularly vile experience when she went to change register her sex denotation at the San Francisco Department of Motor Vehicles: One or the government employees called her an "abomination."
A few days after Amber Yust visited the Department of Motor Vehicles in San Francisco to register her sex change from male to female, she got a letter at home from the DMV employee who had handled her application.Homosexual acts, he informed her, were "an abomination that leads to hell."
The same day, Yust said, a DVD arrived 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."
And, if that wasn't bad enough, "the DMV had kept the employee on in 2009 even after he refused to process another transgender woman's name-change application."
The employee has been identified as Thomas Demartini.
" 'I feel really vulnerable,' " Yust explained to The Chronicle. "It's 'scary that someone who's part of a government agency is able to take my personal information and get in touch with me. I don't think anyone could feel safe going to a DMV where they knew someone like that was working.' "
Although the DMA has not (yet) formally apologized, a regional manager gave a meager mea culp for the Demartini's "unprofessional and disrespectful behavior." Yust has since filed a damage claim before she moves forward with a lawsuit.
Update: Read Demartini's abominable letter below.
