California DMV turns down a leather oriented vanity plate

California is often thought of as a liberal Mecca, and particularly accepting of alternative lifestyles. But apparently a leather community related license plate was going too far.

Robert Haynes submitted a request for a vanity license plate that read LTHR DDY, shorthand for “leather daddy”. The DMV rejected Haynes request, saying the phrase’s “sexual connotation” and how it can be read “as a term of lust or depravity,” according to San Francisco’s Bay Area Reporter.

"I understood when I submitted this the term could be controversial. But for it to be a lustful or depraved reference is missing the scope of leather culture," Haynes, 38, told the Reporter. "And it is kind of endemic of how people take leather culture from the outside and immediately relate it to sexual as being exclusive to the entire lifestyle."

Haynes, despite his age, considers himself a leather daddy.

He has sought the assistance of gay State Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) to intervene with the DMV.

Noting the progressive image of California, Haynes was shocked. "I would expect this perhaps in other parts of the country," he told the B.A.R. "But I really thought California was a little more open-minded and less dualistic in seeing everything as a good and bad binary if you will."

The DMV has an appeals process and Senator Wiener has sent a letter to the agency, asking them to approve Haynes’ LTHR DDY plate.

Read the Bay Area Reporter’s full story here.

Copyright The Gayly – February 21, 2019 @ 1:30 p.m.