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Egads, you have to read this press release from the Transgender Law Center to believe it:
Transgender Law Center Investigating Offensive Letter from DMV EmployeeSan Francisco – The Transgender Law Center is outraged that a California Department of
Motor Vehicles employee sent a letter to the home of a transgender woman calling her “an abomination” and telling her that she is going to hell.Last week Amber Yust, a transgender woman living in San Francisco, went to the San Francisco Department of Motor Vehicles to change her name on her driver’s license. With her court ordered name change and all of the DMV paperwork in hand, Amber was able to get a new driver’s license in her new name. But her experience with the DMV did not end there.
Unbelievably, on Monday, Amber received a letter from the person who had processed her name change at the DMV. In the letter, which had been mailed to her at home, the DMV employee quoted from the Bible and stated that Amber had made a “very evil decision.” The strongly-worded letter told Amber that she was “an abomination” and said that homosexuals should be put to death.
“I was shocked to receive this letter from the person who processed my paperwork at the DMV,” said Amber. “I would never have expected that a DMV employee could use information from my name change application to reach out and personally attack me. This has been a traumatic experience for me and I want to ensure that nothing like this happens to anyone else.”
The Transgender Law Center is investigating the incident.
“This was an egregious act committed by a government employee,” said Masen Davis, Executive Director of the Transgender Law Center. “Transgender people deserve to be treated with respect at agencies like the DMV. What happened to Amber is despicable, and we intend to do everything we can to hold the responsible parties accountable and to prevent this from happening again.”
Despicable is the right word for it. Not only trans people, but all people deserve to be treated with respect by government agencies and the people who work at these agencies — including by the people who work at Department of Motor Vehicles in my home state of California.
By the way, connecting the dots between Pam’s earlier post today (entitled Bam Bam Barber’s bottom line: ‘Time to reunite church and state’), the kind of behavior shown by this DMV employee is an example of what government behavior might be if Matt Barber — and many of Matt Barber’s peers with the dominionist, religious right — had their way.
Good reason to vote, eh?
24 Comments
The only reason a Right Wing Reactionary would do thisis to create a cause celebre; make herself and her cause, which she no doubt perceives to be Christianity as she knows it, the victims and a rallying point for religious “freedon,” (read as: the right to persecute minorities by abusing a governmental position)
It will help to “get out the base” (and who is baser than homophobic Christianist reactionaries?)
Investigate, In-schmestigate…DMV must Fire the rogue employee NOW!What possible excuse can a government employee have to contact a taxpayer using information learned ONLY via official duties to castigate her? I can not think of ONE valid excuse for the DMV employee’s actions. And, unless the DMV is trying to ratify the employee’s behavior, the employee MUST be fired NOW!
Exactly!Gross violation. this should be an immediate fire. ”Did you do this?” ”Yes.” ”Good bye.”
Only problem I had when I went for my name change license was…the bimbette behind the counter flat out refusing to put through the sex marker change per INDMV published rules and regulations. Made me drive for a month on an expired license before I could get encouragement from my doctor (in addition to the letter I showed the bimbette in the first place) to go back and try again.
The second time when told by the bimbette that she couldn’t put through both the judge-ordered name change AND the sex change, I replied with a simple, “I don’t believe you.” And “Let me talk to your supervisor.”
Super came out and did my whole license renewal herself and bid me a good day.
It’s kinda creepy to think the bimbette could have had the technical capability of recording my contact info and sending me a screed.
This Deserves The Same TreatmentAs that despicable FORMER Arkansas school board member. Publish this person’s name and let what happens, happen.
Oh good lord…My actual bf would never be crazy enough to, but if this ever happened to me I’d have my best friend (a wrestler) act as my bf, and we’d go back to that office and bring her to tears. YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?
But yeah, she needs to be fired just for illegally using information obtained at work, to say nothing of what she sent.
Text of the letterappears to be here:
http://www.facebook.com/note.p…
I’m saddened that Ms. Yust had this happen to her, but I’m proud that she went public with it. My biggest problem is that this is exactly what happens when “God is in the Mix”. Believers feel they have the right to do anything their spiritual leader suggests. Thank goodness it was only a nasty worded letter, this could have been much, much worse.
Quite apart from the civil rights issueAny fool knows that civil servants aren’t permitted to retain personal information obtained in the course of their work and use it to contact a customer for reasons unrelated to the performance of their official duties. That’s about the worst thing a public employee can do. I’m thinking this “Thomas” fellow will soon be out of a job.
And while I’m not sure that the rights of transgendered people are specifically covered under CA civil rights law, I’m pretty sure a) that they are and b) there are other ways of litigating this situation nonetheless.
That has to be illegal. It has to be against state law for a state employee to violate confidentiality in this way.In addition to arguably being a hate crime (assault?), it must be illegal for a state employee to use a citizen’s personal information to contact them at home.
Thank you for posting. It’s clear that the letter writer is terrified that he will be damned fo hell for “helping” the person change their license.This sentence from the letter jumped out at me:
Supporting those who commit this act and encouraging and justifying those who have the orientation also lead one to hell.
This is one of the results of religiously-sanctioned hatred and homophobia. This man (who is Catholic, based on the link he included in the letter) seems to believe that he himself is damned to hell simply for “helping” (his word) a transgender citizen exercise their right to change their license. The letter writer is trying to save his soul by writing the letter, absolve himself from guilt.
Horrific to imagine what it must be like to be in this man’s mind. And my contempt for the supposed “people of God” who created this fear and consequent behavior in their parishioner is intense.
If your theory is correct, the DMV bigot Wants to be fired!So WHEN will the DMV accommodate him?
Not CatholicVaticanCatholic.com is an Internet Kook site. People who believe that Vatican II was heretical, and that no valid Pope exists.
Whack-jobs, and possibly dangerous ones.
Sadly, this illustrates….
…that even in the most LGBT-friendly city in America, shameless bigotry still survives, but its proponents become a smaller minority everyday.
In addition to the fact that Tuesday’s election will see another gay man or lesbian joining the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, transgender Theresa Sparks is also likely to be elected.
Currently the executive director of The City’s Human Rights Commission, it’s not surprising that she’s endorsed by gay State Senator Mark Leno, SF Supervisor Bevan Dufty, and Gavin Newsom, the most LGBT-positive non-LGBT mayor in the country, but she’s also endorsed by the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Francisco Examiner, non-LGBT African American, Chinese, and Jewish Democratic clubs, and police, deputy sheriffs, firefighter, healthcare, plumber, and IBEW unions.
She and one of her sons were interviewed by NPR this past Tuesday:
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…
Corrected link. http://www.vatican.va/
No, wait; just another Internet Kook site.
Even more whack-jobs, and possibly dangerous ones.
Actually that first one ( VaticanCatholic.com ) is kinda like visiting the past for me. I grew up around people that could still recite the Mass in Latin and all that other fun stuff. Still, for the VaticanCatholic people to be revealing falsehoods of the Vatican today is like listening to Asylum inmates arguing about which ceiling tile is really in control.
Indeed.This doesn’t even rate the cardboard box and thirty minutes of security guard time while the ex-employee clears out their personal effects. Just don’t come back.
Another possible scenario…an employee with these views who also had a beef with the actual employee who assisted Amber Yust sent the letter.
It’s so hard to believe that anyone would be so willing to throw his job away that he would openly identify himself.
I remember When I finally had my name changed legally. I was walking on air for a week before I came down to earth. I have a feeling that Ms. Yust was yanked back down to the ground a little early.
Why has this person not been summarily fired? What a gross misuse of a position of state responsibility.
Z
Why?First, make sure that they sent it. Then try to prove it.
This may not be easy, unless they confess. If they deny, deny, deny… then it’s possible someone else sent it.
If this kook was smart……there will be no fingerprints on the paper, envelope, or stamp, especially in the stamp’s adhesive. There will be no DNA in saliva on the envelope flap; he’ll have used tap water from somewhere other than his own home or place of work to moisten it.
The paper will be from some popular copy shop and the originally printed screed will have been photocopied to remove any trace of original paper and evidence it held. Likewise, the printer used would be very popular and if possible, it would even be printed at a public copy center, neither at home, nor at the DMV.
The letter itself would be written on the most commonly deployed version of MS Office with all of the default settings in effect. If the kook has any affectations in his writing, commonly used uncommon spellings, punctuation usage, word usage, etc., he would obscure them with opposite or incompatible affectations.
This is, of course, all predicated on the idea that this kook is smart.
Almost forgot…The original printed copy of the letter would be burned to ash and scattered, and the copies in the kook’s computer would be scrubbed from the hard drive using NSA-approved data destruction standards.
The kook would have used the public copy centers at peak times to insure that no one who used them or who worked at them would be able to remember him with any specificity.
And just to keep the knowledge alive, all modern computer printers and photocopiers embed imperceivable patterns of dots on the paper with a code which uniquely identifies the make, model, and serial number of the machine on which it was output.
So, if he has not done all of these things, and the victim turns the original, untainted letter over, investigators will easily be able to trace the letter back to the kook through printer/copier codes (let it be his personal machine that he filed the warranty card on, and not the DMV’s), his fingerprints on the envelope and paper (please let him be in the system), and he’s used the same verbal claptrap at work or otherwise publicly (please let him be that stupid), that will have him dead to rights on a harassment charge with hate-crime modifier.
Martyrdom!Like Crystal Dixon a couple of years back, this bigot will become an instant martyr for the cause, and the religious reicht will use this case as one of their fearmongering fundraising scams.
Or, …Buy cheap typewriter off Craigslist. Pay cash.
Buy common brand of paper. Pay cash. Wear gloves. Dispose of typewriter.
Buy common stamp from wherever. Get the self-adhesive kind. Mail from nearest post office box to victim’s address.
There is no centralized registry of typewriters, especially not these days. Even if they know absolutely it came from an IBM Selectric 2, so what?
Color laser printers typically embed near-invisible yellow dots w/ time and serial number, but black and white printers do not, and can not (you would notice the black dots, or a color cartridge for watermarking).
…is like listening to Asylum inmates arguing about which ceiling tile is really in control.It’s the tile 3rd on the right and 5th from the bottom.
Yer Welcome.
I’ve had personal experiences in such areasThe letter is old, has no doubt been handled several times, and wasn’t given to the police (had they done so, nothing would have been done about it anyway).
Such forensic tests exist; they’re costly; and are rationed to only the most serious cases.
Even credible death threats in Arabic directly connected with previous violent action don’t get such treatment. The evidence has to be fresh, and easily forensically analysed. The usual procedure is for authorities to screen all subsequent mail, so it’s uncontaminated, and easily for run of the mill forensics to deal with.
The cost then is in the thousands, not millions.
No, it’s not me who’s the victim BTW, it’s a friend of mine, nothing to do with GLBT issues. Just one of the many common-or-garden incidents of domestic terrorism investigations that only make page 117 when the perps are caught, convicted, and sentenced.