The true hypocrite is the one who ceases to perceive his deception, the one who lies with sincerity….Andre Gide
73adoptee, has a very important blog today: Compromise Legislation: Why Some Adoptees and Not Others? In fact, it is one of the most important adoptablogs I’ve ever read. If you are on the bastard battlefield, this is something to read, print out, and carry with you. Let it become part of you.
Why Some Adoptees And Not Others? goes to the core of our current mess: the bastardization of bastards…by our so-called friends. 73adoptee tears the foundation out from under adopta deformers, who in their rat race to the legislature to get any piececrap law passed on their watch– tramp over the interests and rights of Joe and Jane Bastard. You know, class traitors like CARE (California) ABC (Massachusetts) and Illinois Feigenholtz do-bees. What happens when they get left behind on their own device never seems to cross their minds.
Here’s a snip:
Isn’t that what conditional legislation does? Pits adoptees against one another, turns us (again!) into guinea pigs racing on the experimental wheel of adoption. The facts of our origins are dangled like tasty tidbits if we only sell out our fellow lab rats. I was under this spell when I thought getting the Illinois CI program to accept interstate adoptees was actually helping my fellow adoptees. Now I know what it’s like to be left behind. Every society needs its lepers, its outcasts. Maybe bastardizing fellow bastards makes some adoptees feel good about themselves. It reaffirms their status as Good Adoptees, practiced players of the Adoption Game, in contrast to their Bad Adoptee counterparts, the ungrateful question-askers. I see a similar trend with our mothers. Good Birth Mothers make no waves. Bad ones dare think about their surrendered offspring or (egads!) search for them, and the REALLY bad ones have the audacity to voice their opinions on adoption themselves rather than letting people like the NCFA do it for them.
And here is 73 adoptee’s jackhammer at the cornerstone of deformer thought: baby steps:
We don’t understand that small steps have to be taken. To quote the Fourth Doctor, a little patience goes a long way; too much patience goes absolutely nowhere. Or if you prefer: When you keep dividing a number by half you will never get to zero. You will end up dividing by half for infinity. The analogy in adoption is conditional legislation that takes up dozens of pages instead of one straightforward sentence. Do you want to legislate for each and every special case? Because there are no standard adoptions, no rules, just one great big hodgepodge of interstate and international adoptions. Keep trying if you want, Sisyphus, but it’s pointless. There is only one way to treat all participants in all adoptions the same and that is to equalize access.…
The lines are finally being drawn. NCFAnoids and deformers both seek to control bastards and their rights. Who, then, is the real enemy? NCFA, ACLU, the Bishops, Right to Life, whom we have already defeated in Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire and Maine or the deformers who year after year after year toss out compromises like candy to toddlers at a parade: disclosure and contact vetoes, CIs, and registries in the name of “progress.”
Beating the “official enemy” is very doable. They are consistent. They never surprise. They don’t lie about their policies no matter how crack-brained they are. Deformers, unfortunately, go any which way the wind blows, lick crumbs from each other’s boots, and can only be trusted to not be trusted.
The truth is more states would probably be open today if compromisers would baby step out of the way and stop negating our rights in favor of favors. Every minute spent fighting bad deform bills is a minute that won’t be spent on clean bills. Ask for what you want. If you don’t have the nerve, crawl back under your white picket fence and let the people who aren’t afraid, ask for you.
On a related note, Sandy Young, over on Musing Mother has a link to the SMACC site and its nifty little survey Should the NCFA or Evan B. Donaldson Institute speak on behalf of mothers who have lost their children to adoption? I cast my vote last night and it was something like 26-1 in favor of….
Addenda, 3/3/2009, 9:52 AM: BB Church has excellent commentary on Why Some Adoptees and Not Others here.
Marley–As author of the 73adoptee blog, thanks much for the link and your post. I also do not know why deformers insist upon compromise. Do they really think compromises work, are they just not thinking about it, or are they getting something under the table? As far as I know, no state that has enacted conditional legislation has ever revisited it to turn it into clean open records. The legislators here in Illinois consider the matter a done deal, as I’m sure they do elsewhere. After all, we’ve got access, right? Never mind the process is worse than useless, not to mention humiliating.
As you said it is far easier to deal with a clean slate than try to get rid of conditional legislation once enacted. Too many people look at new adoption bills and say, “Great, this will open records!” without analyzing them to see if they are more trouble than they’re worth.
No one should have to put up with less than equality. As an adoptee I refuse to be marginalized, and I hope other reformers will step up to the plate and fight against these so-called compromises which are actually a continuation of sealed records.
It’s a great piece, indeed! This goes right along with the industry’s long history of pitting adoptee against mother. I think that these ijits are starting to believe their own hype.
I can see your point about the “deformers.” There is one organization that could have been very effective in the battle against big adoption and the unfair laws. But it was ruined, from the inside, by those who sought compromise or tried to sleep with the enemy.