WRITTEN TESTIMONY IN SUPPORT OF LD 1805: ACCESS TO BIRTH CERTIFICATES FOR MAINE’S ADULT ADOPTEESJoint Judiciary CommitteeFebruary 28, 2006 Marley Elizabeth GreinerExecutive Chair, Bastard Nation: The Adoptee Rights Organization Dear Honorable Members of the Joint Judiciary Committee: My name is Marley Elizabeth Greiner and I’m the co-founder and Executive Chair of Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America. Our membership includes adopted adults and birth and adoptive parents. Bastard Nation advocates for the full human and civil rights of adult adoptees. This means opening government documents pertaining to the adoptee’s historical, genetic, and legal identity, including the unaltered original birth certificate and adoption decree. We believe people everywhere have a right to their unaltered and unfalsified birth records LD 1805 is inclusive. It legislates equality between the adopted and non-adopted citizenry. Members of this committee, unless you are adopted, you have the right to your own birth certificates. You do not need your parents’ permission, a court order, or to wrangle with a trade lobby wanting to hide your records from you for your own alleged good. But if you learned this afternoon that you were adopted, you would need to do Continue Reading →

* Rights are for all citizens, not favors or privileges doled out on the whim of bureaucrats and special interest groups. All adults should have the same access to government-held records of their births, whether adopted or not. Preventing adult adoptees from obtaining this information is discriminatory. * The state has no compelling interest in and should not be in the business of concealing basic, personal identity information from its own citizens. * The fundamental right of adoptees to have access to our own government-held identity information is a separate issue from whether or not adoptees and birth parents should contact each other. * Adult adoptees and birth parents contact each other all the time, even in sealed records states. As competent adults, we are capable of negotiating our own relationships, if and when we choose to form them. * The state should not block adults from their own birth documents in an attempt to prevent contact between two adult parties. In what other capacity does the state regulate contact between law-abiding adult citizens? * There is no evidence that restoring to adult adoptees the right to access our own identity information is detrimental to the process of adoption. * Continue Reading →

It’s always something! Bastardette can’t be in two places at once, but she’d appreciate your help right now. Write to the Missouri House Judiciary and support HB 1436. Restore the civil rights of Missouri adptees–NOW! Adoptees aren’t permanent wards of thes state ya know! BASTARD NATION URGENT ACTION ALERT: SUPPORT MISSOURI’S HB-1436, OPEN RECORDS FOR ADULT ADOPTEES!HB-1436 WILL BE HEARD IN THE HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE ON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28th. PLEASE CONTACT THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS AND URGE THEM TO PASS THIS BILL OUT OF COMMITTEE WITH A “YES” VOTE!!HB-1436 has been introduced in the Missouri Assembly and would restore the availability of original birth certificates to adult adoptees born in the state, upon request and on par with other adults born in Missouri. This is a very straightforward adoptee rights bill that has been re-introduced for several years but thwarted by powerful legislators. The Missouri Open group supporting this legislation needs our help to ensure that the voice for adoptee rights in heard in the Show Me State!! Please remember that legislative activity on our issue in one state does impact what happens in other states. We are all in this together. Please pitch in and help Missouri win open records Continue Reading →

Bastardette has managed to blow off the month of February despite the best laid plans to post daily or thereabouts. It’s not for a lack of anything to say! In a few hours I’m off to the sunny state of Maine to testify before the Joint Judiciary Committee in favor of LD 1805–the bill, which if passed, will restore the right of identity and records access to Maine’s adoptees. According to the weather report the temperature is 14 but feels like 8. Does it make any difference at that point? Anyway, I’ll be back in a few days with a full report and pictures and a copy of my testimony. I’d post my testimony now, but why give the Axis of Evil a leg up to piss on us? With a little luck, there will be another NCFA meltdown. BTW, NCFA’s St. Andre Home is leading the braying pack calling for birthparent privilege. Right on Andy’s heels are the Catholic Diocese and Planned Parenthood. That bed sure is getting crowded. Here’s information about Maine’s Access 2006 campaign to take back our identities in Maine. And here is the Bastard Nation action alert. Write the committee and let them know that Continue Reading →

For as long as Bastardette can remember, adult adoptees have been the object of fear and hatred on both sides of the abortion issue. During the Sundquist case when Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice and the National Council for Adoption challenged Tennessee’s semi-records access law, Robertson went so far as to claim that the open records movement was simply a stealth attempt by pro-aborts to push abortion, since abortion would be the only solution to the intrusion of dirty little secrets aka bastards into the sancity of the home. (Unfortunately, this quote is no longer available online). The ACLU, Planned Parenthood and NARAL–claiming bizzrarely that adoption is a “reproductive choice” equal to abortion or any other medical procedure deserving of “privacy”– frequently join the anti-abort Robertson clique claque implying that adoptees are disrupters from whom women need protection. During Sundquist a coalition of Tennessee repro-service providers supported ACLJ/NCFA but declined to sign on as amici. (Memo in the possesion of Bastrardette). The ACLU even shows up in in the NCFA Factbook 3 quashing adoptees like the cockroaches it believes we are. And I’ve already discussed what these so-called civil libertarians have done in New Jersey. At this Continue Reading →

NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! There is justsomething so wrong with this! According to the February 6, 2006 issue of The Scotsman, The Vatican, which “owns the rights” to the written prayers and chants of John Paul 2, has been in talks with Michael Jackson to put the works to music. (Maybe Jacko thinks he can make a killing convincing Sony to trade the Beatles catalogue for the Pope’s?) Whatever…. Is the Vatican really this stupid? So out-of-touch? But then .. nobody lately has accused the Church of being in touch with anything or anybody anyway. If The Vatican goes through with this nutty idea, we can use it to our advantage. After all, who’s gonna listen to a bunch of Catholic bishops get the vapors over bastards when their own church has turned over JP2 prayer legacy to Jacko. Talk about tainted love! Here’s the complete story: Jackson in talks to set late Pope’s prayers to musicNICK PISA AND RAYMOND HAINEY SECRET discussions between the Roman Catholic Church and Michael Jackson to put the prayers of Pope John Paul II to music appeared to be in disarray last night after the singer fled members of the press who had Continue Reading →

Life News.com reports a bill introduced in the Utah legislature that would require teenage women to secure the consent of their parents before getting an abortion. HB 85 sponsor Kerry Gibson (R-Ogden) told the Salt Lake City Tribune that his bill is a parental rights issue. “I’m responsible for anything my child does underage…It’s critical parents give their consent to this.” (abortion) He added that his 10-year old daughter inspired him to write the bill. What is it with these politicians? Last year we had Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich push through a bill that banned anyone in the state under the age of 21 from getting tats –because they might regret it later. Again “inspired” by his daughters–who are barely old enough to cross the street by themselves much less run over to Body Basics to get inked. Do these political projectors ever ask their kids before using their names in vain? We doubt it. Rep. Gibson has obviously been asleep at the wheel. In 2001, the Utah legislature rejected the concept of “parental rights””when it passed the state’s safe haven law that lets underage women anonymously abandon their newborns at hospitals and fire stations with no parental knowledge, much Continue Reading →

Bastardette is out of town for a few days. Erik Smith, once again jumps into the breech with his new article. Go to eriksmith.org for more of his work. I had always considered Franz Kafka to be the king of absurd fiction. Not any more. I now nominate the Florida legislature for the top honor. Its masterpiece is the Florida Adoption Act, a law purporting to balance the rights of all parties in adoptions. The Act starts by stating that the mother can conceal her pregnancy from the father and defraud the court.1 Consequently, simply because he had sexual intercourse, the father has a duty to file with the Florida putative father registry.2 To register, however, he must swear to be the father of an existing child.3 The registry then tells him he can revoke this sworn paternity claim only before the birth of the child who may not exist.4 If the child turns out to exist, but the man realizes after the birth that the child is not his, he must execute an “irrevocable affidavit of nonpaternity” to eliminate the father status he earlier had a duty to claim.5 To balance rights further, the Act tells the mother that Continue Reading →

When Bastardette began the Daily Bastardette last year, she thought she’d be lucky if 14 people read it. She was so sure that she’d flop that she got a hidden counter so she wouldn’t have to be humiliated in public when even less than that read her. Well as of midnight January 17, she’s had 10,016 hits! Now, I’m not naive enough to think that everybody who drops by is going to stay…yet 10,000 looks pretty good to me. Curiously, over 8 % of her readers come from Germany. What’s THAT about? She’s also got readers in Malaysia, Italy, the Czech Republic, Russia….and the US State Department! Whoa! Thanks to all friends and unknowns who have supported Bastardette the last 8 months. I’m going to be writing more often and put the daily in Daily including some investigative pieces. I’ve got other stuff sitting here waiting to be tweaked. There is just so many fun and exciting things happenin’ in AdoptionLand it’s hard to know where to start. In the meantime let me know what you’d like to hear about. I’ll try to accommodate. Yours is Bastardy,BastardetteRockin’ n Rollin’ since 2005