Boston Trolley Crash Driver Is FTM

Right-wing blogs and forums are lighting up with outrage because the driver of a Boston trolley that crashed on Friday night is a transgender male who was texting his girlfriend at the time of the crash. The crash resulted in 46 injuries and $10M damage to the transit system. Via ABC:

The Boston-area transit authority trolley driver who allegedly slammed into another train while text-messaging his girlfriend Friday was hired as a minority because of his transgendered "female-to-male" status and had three speeding tickets on his driving record in recent years, ABC News has learned. Aiden Quinn, 24, was born Georgia Quinn and boasts on an Internet networking site that he was one of the first transgender hires by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The trolley driver lists his sexual orientation as "FTM" and was hired as a minority using his transgender status, two sources told ABC News. "[Quinn] was initially hired as a minority and used her transgender status,'' an MBTA source said today. MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo told ABC News today that there was "nothing unusual" about Quinn's hire, and that he was picked out of a lottery that he entered in 2004.

This is the second such incident involving LGBT transit workers in the last year. In September 2008, the gay engineer of a California commuter train had been texting just before a crash that cost 24 lives including his own. The Boston driver will likely be fired this week after an investigation.