Transgender woman says DMV clerk warned of hell

(12-09) 18:34 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- 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."

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.

Safety fear

"I feel really vulnerable," Yust, a 23-year-old software engineer, said Thursday. 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."

Her lawyer, Christopher Dolan, said the DMV "should have fired this guy the first time, and they left him in a position where he could harm people."

He said disclosing personal information from DMV records violates state privacy and civil rights laws and can be grounds for criminal prosecution.

DMV spokesman Armando Botello said the department would not comment on the complaint. He also said the DMV would not disclose whether the employee still works there or has been the subject of any disciplinary action, because "it's a personnel matter."

Yust's lawyers identified the employee as Thomas Demartini. He could not be located for comment.

No apology

The DMV has not responded to Yust's complaints, said Kristina Wertz, legal director of the Transgender Law Center, which is also working on the case. "They've not told us what they've done in response to this incident and have made no effort to apologize," Wertz said.

She said 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."

The Transgender Law Center then held training sessions for San Francisco DMV employees, focusing on the California law that prohibits discrimination based on sexual identity, Wertz said. She said the sessions were well-received and seemed to be effective until Yust's case came to light.

Yust had recorded her name and sex change with a court and the Social Security office in October, then went to the DMV office on Fell Street to change her driver's license.

Biblical passages

Demartini expressed no objection while processing her application, Yust said. But she believes he took down her name and address and shared them with his church.

The letter she received four days later was filled with biblical condemnations of homosexuality, including the passage in Leviticus that says two men who have sex "must be put to death," and implored Yust to change her mind about her sex change.

The letter also referred her to the website of the Most Holy Family Monastery, whose name was on a parcel that arrived the same day. It contained the DVD warning of damnation and a grisly leaflet showing hearts torn from bodies, said Dolan, her lawyer.

Split from Catholics

The church's website describes it as a Catholic organization that split from the Roman Catholic Church because of the second Vatican Council's ecumenical outreach in the 1960s and considers other faiths to be devil-worshipers.

A woman at church headquarters in New York, who did not give her name, said Thursday the church does not distribute materials like those Yust received.

Yust filed a damage claim against the DMV this week with a state agency, which has 45 days to respond. Dolan said Yust would seek damages for emotional distress and a court order requiring the agency to follow state privacy laws.

E-mail Bob Egelko at begelko@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle