When Pariahs Meet: The formerly fat Bastardette with Dr. Pierce, Capital University Law School Symposium on Gay and Single Parent Adoption, November 2, 2002, Columbus, Ohio. Today marks the second anniversary of the passing of Bill Pierce, founding president of the National Council for Adoption. The Good Doctor was Bastardette’s greatest friend and greatest enemy in AdoptionLand. He inspired and angered; lectured and learned; snipped and snapped– and believe it or not, he never took it all too seriously. Bill liked and admired Bastard Nation, the only organization he said had ever stood up to him with fire its heart and without some mysterious “hidden agenda.” He believed (or at least said he believed) that after Oregon he’d lost the records access war– which, of course, didn’t stop him from claiming that Bastard Nation had “bought the election.” If only Bill hadn’t been so hung up on his weird-ass idea of “adoption privacy.” If he’d had his way I suppose phone books would be banned. Under different circumstances he would have been a Bastard. Of course, lots of people thought he already was–with a small b. Bill genuinely liked people who fought for what they believed in, even if he Continue Reading →

OK. Bastardette lied. In her last blog she promised to do some catch-up posts before the dawn of the new year There’s a baker’s half-dozen in the oven, but…well..the oven broke. Seriously. Try to write (or do much of anything) when your entire electrical system blows out and it’s 10 degrees outside and you can’t get it fixed for 4 days and you’ve got to sit around wearing 3 pairs of sweat pants, 4 jackets and a wool hat waiting for the repair guy. Surfer Dude offered Bastardette shelter when she wasn’t waiting for the dog team, so she didn’t turn into a post-born snowflake. At least she doesn’t’ think she did. But as an adoptee, she’s really not allowed to know, and should just shut up lest a zygote be flushed. Whatever, I didn’t want to close out the old year with nothing but a Dick Clark memory so I’m sending an inspiring and uplifting tale of me-ism, Family Planning: Adoption is a Journey of Faith, from the pen of desperate and (semi-) childless Carol Tice, reporter, adopter, and God nanny. To get the full impact of this soon-to-be adoption classic, the less dyspepsic may want to first visit Continue Reading →

Bastrardette is such a klutz! 45 minutes ago she attempted to fix the date stamp on the latest blog: Family Planning Family Spamming, and the entire thing disappeared and can’t be recovered. Perhaps it was taken to a Safe Haven drop-off center, fast-tracked anonymously by a National Council for Adoption agency, and is now in the hands of a cult church. Anyway, if you’ve come to read Family Planning, Family Spamming….I’m retyping and reconstructing it and it should be back up tonight.

Want to know how we got where we are today? Then read Landmark Cases in Adoption just published by Bastardette’s good friend and co-conspirator Erik Smith. Erik summarizes and explains 11 key court decisions which changed adoption practice in the US–5 from the US Supreme Court, 5 from state Supreme Courts, and 1 from a Federal Appellate court–covering step-parent adoption, the rights of unwed fathers, putative father registries, Native Americans, wrongful adoption, and open records. Erik is one of AdoptionLand’s most innovative legal thinkers. (OK, Bastardette believes he is the most innovative thinker hands down!) His groundbreaking arguments against safe haven laws (and here) give Bastardette hope that sometime in the not so distant future these odious laws will be struck from the books, drop kicked into the dumpster, and floated up the river on garbage scow without a paddle. In the meantime, Erik continues to educate and inform us. You’ll find Erik’s page here.

It has become quite clear over the last 5 years that cowardly legislators, do-gooder “child welfare” social engineers and apparatchiki, agendized circle jerks Right to Life (any chapter), Planned Parenthood (any chapter) , NARAL–now quaintly calling itself Pro-Choice America, assorted right wing nuts, lefties, policy hacks, and of course, our secrets-and-lies-for-your-own-good friends at the National Council for Adoption don’t know jack about adoption. They don’t give a rat’s ass about adopted persons, abandoned babies, birth and adoptive parents, adoptee rights, identity rights, father’s rights, ICWA, pre-and post-natal medical care and counseling for pregnant women and mothers, much less “best practice” in child welfare, or ethics, yet they overtly or covertly support safe haven bills. It’s a wonder these self-righteous blowhards could fit into the same rickety bed. The upside, of this unholy fornication though is that we now know they’re openly shacking up in their cheap hotel. Nobody has to be disillusioned that their pet anti-abort, “repro rights” or adoption “advocate” thinks they and their rights are anything but dog dirt. They drew the line. Conversely, there is my friend Erik Smith and his innovative commonsense arguments against Safe Havens; arguments that sink these wanker cons, hand-wringing libs, and busybody Continue Reading →

Here is my panel presentation for the ASAIK conference. Footnoting is a real problem in this form, so instead I’ve included a selected bibliography at the bottom. The piece is also liberally linked. Presented by Marley GreinerEdited by Erik L. Smith Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity, and Kinship ConferenceUniversity of Tampa, November 19, 2005 ““Stretch the paint, Todd. All we wish to do is put up a good front”…..Arthur Kennedy to the handyman, A Summer Place (1959)I have always been a big movie fan—especially of old films and maternal melodramas. After co-founding Bastard Nation in 1996 I began to seek out cinematic representations of bastards and adoptees. Although I grew up with Stella Dallas, Penny Serenade, Blossoms in the Dust, Shirley Temple, Disney, and the now impossible- to-find That Hagen Girl, I had never consciously identified with any of the characters nor with adoption narratives in general. But with a newly honed bastard consciousness I began investigating how Hollywood constructed cultural ideology and myths about us. Out of the hundreds of adoption-themed films made, few examine the turmoil surroundng adoption as a social and political institution. Few take the adoptee point of view. Instead, most treat the adopteee Continue Reading →

Bastardette will be gone for a few days, attending the Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity and Kinship Conference at the University of Tampa. Between adventures in illicit sex, sips of absinthe and voluminous tears over the baybee pulled from her arms by impersonal forces of history so many years ago–no scratch that last one–she has been busy writing and tearing apart and tweaking her panel presentation: “Where We Came From: The Natural Mother in Adoption Film.” She has unhappily come to the conclusion that her expertise in feminist film theory is sadly lacking. Consequently, she is girding up for the slings and arrows of the English Department. Gaze, desire, multiplicity, sign, muteness, register, the body–what ever happened to plain old communication? If ya’ll behave, she may put the paper up here after the conference, though that means she’ll have to go back and footnote everything and prove what she’s talking about. In the meantime, go to your local library (Blockbuster most likely won’t have these films) and pick up Forbidden, That Certain Woman, The Great Lie, or A Summer Place and kick back. And don’t forget a hanky!!

Like Martha Huber, Bastardette is a gossip magnet. Hardly a day goes by when a delicious scrim of AdoptionLand gossip doesn’t fly across her screen. Most of it is best kept in friendly cozy little loops or snerky phone calls. But occasionally one is just too good to pass up. So when this too intriguing story was sent along, it just had to be shared. Especially because it’s about Bastardette. One of those ubiquitous relilable sources told yours truly that on Monday Tom Atwood, president of the National Council for Adoption was interviewed for a major network news show to be broadcast later this month on the subject of forever dead Russian adoptees. You know, those kids who are adopted from the dom rebyonka and promptly whacked–or at least physically or sexually abused–by their selfless forever US adopters. According to Bastardette’s ubiquitous reliable source, Mr. Atwood appeared to be using Bastardette’s Forever Family–Forever Dead blog as his major information source throughout the interview Now, Bastardette was not actually there and can only go by her ubiquitous reliable source, but…nonetheless…under the reported circumstances… Bastardette is honored, flattered, thrilled and humbled that NCFA trusts her so much that the GREAT I AM Continue Reading →