Today I’m posting a couple of informational messages from outside Dom Bastardette that might be of interest to readers. Bastardette This is the first, coutresy of Pam Hasagawa at Adoption News Service. Good morning. I wanted to give you a heads-up on a story that we’ll be running this Sunday (Dec. 17) on 60 MINUTES that I thought you might be interested in. It’s about a (relatively) new program being tried to track down and reconnect the families of children stranded in the child welfare system. It’s a really interesting piece, and we’re hoping to spread the word around beforehand to people who might have a particular interest in the subject matter. It would therefore be wonderful if you would consider sending something out to your listserve and/or putting something on your website. The piece will be broadcast on CBS stations on at 7:00 ET/PT on Sun., Dec. 17. Further details and other information to be posted on our websitewhich you’re welcome to link to from yours. (And if your own site has relevantinformation on this topic that might be useful to our viewers, please let me know. I’d be happy to send it along to our web folk for Continue Reading →

One of Bastardettes’s favorite adoption bloggers Grannie Annie nails it in today’s blog, Original Birth Certificates: Right or Privilege. The Deformers in New Jersey have fashioned a “Mother, May I?” amendment allowing birthmothers 12 months following passage of the bill in which to file an affidavit of nondisclosure. This means that if a birth mother signs a statement saying she doesn’t want her identity known to her child of adoption, then that adoptee doesn’t get his or her birth certificate- possibly forever. New Jersey is actually handing over its constitutional responsibility of issuing birth certificates to birth mothers who claim they want their privacy. These are the same birth mothers, I might add, who legally and irrevocably gave up all legal rights to their children at the time of the relinquishment.THE MOMMIE/STATE OF THINGSTagging S1087 as a “Mother May I? bill” is a stroke of semantic genius. The phrase strips away the progressive façade of compromising adoption deform and exposes its underpinnings of self-defeat and internalized unworthiness. Mother May I? bills accept the false claim that parents have the right to dictate the terms of identity retrieval to their adult children who they signed (willingly or not) into the adoption Continue Reading →

Bastardette, as do all righteous bastards, opposes New Jersey’s S1087. That’s not a secret. Yet there is something about the Dimwit pols, wonks, and ambulance chasers who all oppose this bill–for the wrong reasons–that really conniptions her. I mean, if you’re gonna oppose the bill, do it on the grounds that it screws adopees, not because it doesn’t screw them enough. These Dimwits, no doubt suffering from over- exposure to Natural Enemy, believe with all their hearts and souls that adoptees are professional intruders, home wreckers, deviants, and ax killers with the sensitivity of Saddam Hussein and the manners of a competitive eater at a rib burnoff. A survey of Dimwit comments from Dimwit anti-adoptee thugs regarding the New Jersey proposal suggests that they have warmer feelings towards the aforementioned Mr. Hussein than they do with the grown-up versions of those cuddly little bundles they’ve channeled into the local adoption mill. It is obvious that the adoption mythos pounds firmly in their pure white Chrisian hearts and …they don’t know what they are talking about. But since when has the industry let bastards and their natural parents speak with their own voice? Still there is something comforting about knowing that Continue Reading →

“We-loved-you-so-much-we-couldn’t-bear-to-tell-you-you’re-adopted bastards have a new resource! Bastardette’s fav Bastard Ron Morgan has launched Late Discovery.org for this much ignored cohort of scammed boat-rocking adoptees who were so special they weren’t allowed to know they weren’t flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Here is Ron’s announcement: If you are a Late Discovery Adoptee, you are not alone! If you discovered you were adopted, you may feel isolated, angry, depressed and confused. You are not alone; thousands of other Late Discovery Adoptees share your experience. Come share yours. The new Late Discovery website provides resources and support for Late Discovery Adoptees. Articles, stories, news, survey and more Late Discovery

The New Jersey Some-Adoptees-Are-More-Equal-Than-Others bill passed the NJ Senate today, 26-12-1. No doubt its well-intentioned supporters consider passage a victory for adoptee rights. It is not. S1087[pdf] is more of the same old same old with a new twist of the knife-in-the-back. Sure everybody can get their original birth certificate…but birthparents can make the state remove their names from it and create a second forged birth certificate even more insulting than the amended birth certificate. I guess nobody ever told the folks up there that the “original birth certificate” had to be complete and accurate. As long as it’s branded “original” I guess that makes everything OK. Holy Immaculate Conception! YOU ARE NOT WORTHYWhat is really ingenious about this bill is that politicians don’t have to change their attitude toward adoptees one degree. They can bestow a birth certificate favor on the adopted without restoring the birth certificate right. Nothing has changed. The white-out opt-out affirms the doctrine of adoptee suspectability. Under S1087 adoptees remain a stigmatized legal and social class. Our identity rights are tossed around by the new and special whim-and-quirk right of a few birthparents who signed their children into the adoption mill 20, 30, 50 or Continue Reading →

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get less than you settled for.…..Maureen Dowd In 2004 I wrote a letter to several New Jersey newspapers in which I outlined why Bastard Nation rejected S1093, a compromised birth records access bill introduced in that state. The letter was never published. The bill has been reurrected as S1087 [pdf] and will go to the NJ Senate tomorrow for a floor vote. I thought it was time to dust off the letter, update and expand it a little (including some adoptee-hating blither-blathers in today’s Parsippany Daily Record), and post it here. More of Bastardette’s comments on the New Jersey situation are at ACLU Slags Adoptees Again (April 24, 2005). You will find Bastard Nation’s letter to the New Jersey Senate and our Action Alert just below this blog. **********Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization opposes S1087. If passed, this bill will permit the distribution of true original birth certificates to some adults born and adopted in New Jersey. It will distribute falsified and defaced original birth certificates to others through implementaton of birthparent secrecy request. Bastard Nation rejects ALL arguments for and against the current draft of S1087 as reactionary Continue Reading →

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT! NEW JERSEY S1087/A2557 Please forward freely. (See previous post for BN’s letter to the NJ Senate) STOP DISCLOSURE VETO/WHITE OUT LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY!!! ASK THE NEW JERSEY SENATE TO VOTE NO ON S1087/A2557! DON’T LET PASSAGE OF BAD LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY THREATEN EFFORTS IN OTHER STATES FOR TRUE EQUAL ACCESS FOR ADULT ADOPTEES!! IT’S BACK! S1087/A2557, (formerly S1093/A 3237) is due for a floor vote in the New Jersey Senate on Monday December 4. Please email or call the New Jersey Senators immediately and urge them to VOTE NO ON S1087/A2557. Please see contact information below. The bill contains a birthparent disclosure veto provision. It also provides for a one year period following bill passage in which birthparents can file a veto to prohibit their names from being disclosed on the original birth certificates. Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization opposes legislation that denies any adult adoptees access to their own original birth records on par with all other citizens. Please let the Senate know that this issue is not about relationships between adoptees and their birthparents. It is about basic human and civil rights and the relationship between adoptees and the STATE of Continue Reading →

The compromised New Jersey “open records” bill S1087.A2557 (go here and type in bill number to read it) is scheduled for a floor vote in the Senate on Monday, December 4, 2006. Bastard Nation opposes this bill. Below is our letter to NJ senators. Our action alert will be posted here shortly with information on how you can voice your opposition, too. ********* Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization opposes S1087/A2557 and asks you to oppose it, too. If passed, this bill will permit some New Jersey adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates. Others, through the compromise language of this bill, will receive only a false and mutilated certificate with the name and address of the parent(s) bureaucratically excised by the Department of Health and Senior Services by order of the birthparent(s). Bastard Nation rejects this special right of birthparents to remove their names from the birth certificates of their own adult offspring. No other parent has that right. Why should birthparents have different rules? Since 1999 three states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to records and identity access: Oregon through state-wide ballot initiative, and Alabama and New Hampshire through legislation. Why should Continue Reading →

Canton, Ohio is my hometown, an honor non-singing Bastardette shares with Macy Gray, The O’Jays, the late Gerald Levert and Canton Christian School graduate Marilyn Manson. Although Canton was once known as Little Chicago, you seldom hear the town mentioned in the news anymore except during National Pro-Football Hall of Fame weekend. Well, there was that little story that hit the wire last year about Timken High School that embarrassed a lot of people. Over 13% of the female students were pregnant. But we don’t want to go there. At least not today. Now, to remedy this sad situation, we have Ken and Kristie Sigler, formerly of Canton Actually next-door Louisville. But we don’t want to go there, either. At least not today. Kristie graduated from my alma mater Malone College and Ken worked at Malone as a residence director. Feel the bonding! The Siglers now live in Columbus, and as all good Cowtowners are Buckeye fans, They are 2 of the fortunate 101,568 fans holding tickets for THE BIG GAME! today. 10 rows up at the closed end of The Shoe! Tickets people whore and steal and kill for. The Siglers are also desperate and childless. (Is that a Continue Reading →

For those of you less than entertained by “Baby Safe Haven” check out this very entertaining video on You Tube: Spousal Safe Haven. It must be knicker-wadding time in Boston. Too bad Bastardette doesn’t have a video camera.