The Bastard Boutique is now open for business.
After a long hiatus, Bastard Nation swag is once again avaiilable to the public. We have a large selection of Bastard Nation calendars, postcards, magnets and hard to come-by keyrings and jewelry. More swag is on the way. Here’s a sample: Continue Reading →
Well, I’m not sure if we conquered, but bastards and adoptees certainly held our own this National Adoption/National Adoption Awareness Month–the longest month of the year. Especially long if you’re force-writing every day while tin horn blowers and tin hat wearers, shysters in 3-piece suits, flim-flamers, do-gooders, Biblicalticians ,Grundys, neurotics, pschchotics, happy dappies, and woundies are all out to get you from one side or the other. Me thinks the whole world is crazy except me and thee; and sometimes I wonder about thee. Continue Reading →
I hope all my Bastard Buddies are having a great Thanksgiving. I am so thankful to you all for moving the restoration of our rights closer this year than they were last year. And, of course, for your friendship. Continue Reading →
Next to sealed birth certificates, pony deprivation is the most serious problem adoptees face today. Placing us for adoption in the belief that we would be reared in a home with a pony which they couldn’t provide, birthparents have been shocked, to learn that forever families did not, in fact, come automatically equipped with the promised pony. Most adoptees, much to our (and our birthparents) dismay have been forced to live a pony-free life. We’re not happy about it.
2016 Presidential hopeful Vermin Supreme has stepped up to our plate promising to change that. He has formed the Free Pony Party (and on Facebook) and promises a government- subsidized pony for everyone in the United States. Continue Reading →
Here’s some weekend updates on previous #flipthescript/NAM blogs this month. Continue Reading →
A few days earlier I published a post about the hypocritical lack of support for adoptee rights from the adoption-pushing Radiance Foundation. I mentioned that I’d been blocked from reading its tweets for asking politely if the christo-right Radiance and its CEO Ryan Bomberger, a very vocal happy adoptee, supported adoptee rights. (And no, I didn’t address Ryan as “christo-right!) You’d think Radiance would weigh in on this since Ryan, Inc considers adoption the cure-all for abortion and has made it a keystone of the foundation’s ideology. I fail to see how anti-aborts anywhere can not support adoptee rights without looking like a hypocrite ,but they do and get away with it, and Ryan Bomberger is one of the biggest scofflaws out there. Barely a day goes by when a unicorn doesn’t sprout from Ryan’s brow, but I’ve never seen an OBC or court record spout from his fingers Continue Reading →
Bastard Nation is happy to announce that long-time adoptee rights activist Mari Steed has been named Vice President of Bastard Nation. Mari has been with us from the beginning and has played an invaluable role in our formation and success. Continue Reading →
“Safe spaces” is really about the fear of the free flow of ideas– an attempt to shut people out and up. If you don’t agree that all adoptive parents are “adoptaraptors and child abusers, or that adoption is slavery, for instance, you’re “pro-adoption” (whatever that means), you “don’t understand,” you’e a shill for the adoption industry, or worst yet–a bully. See, the universal safe space crowd attempts to bully those it disagrees with by calling them bullies Continue Reading →
Known popularly as the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2015, the bill reportedly will close the gap left by the Adoptee Citizenship Act of 2000, which left thousands of older cross-country adoptees in the US without the protection of US citizenship (and newer ones with) because adoption agencies, adoptive parents and even INS/ICE in the past failed to comply or follow-through with US law when these adoption were finalized. S2275 will automatically grant US citizenship to all IA’s upon finalization, and their new families will not be required to apply for naturalization for their internationally adopted children.
Despite the myth of the “forever family,” currently older international adoptees are subject to deportation to their countries of origin for any reason the national security state deems appropriate. Jao Herbert, adopted as child from Brazil and reared in Wadswrotoh, Ohio, near Akron, for instance, was deported after he was convicted of a misdemeanor pot charge . Federal law left the judge no wiggle room. He was subsequently murdered outside his home in Campinas. Like other adoptee deportees he had no familial ties, or cultural and language skills left over from his country of origin. Strangers in a strange land. Continue Reading →
Unlike legislators, policy wonks,and paid lobbyists, who sell their labor for big bucks and usually have no dog in the fight, those of us in adoptee rights live the cause. It is our civil rights, narratives, histories, relationships, and health, that are affected adversely by archaic sealed records laws. We don’t have aides to do our scut work. We don’t have the luxury of going home at night and forgetting it all. We squeeze in time between work and personal responsibilities to get the work done. Continue Reading →