But, when you stand for nothing, you get nothing. Yesterday, the Senate Seniors, Children and Families Committee gutted the gutted bill even more with new restrictions. How is MARM going to spin this “beautiful thing”– a bill that would keep some adoptees records sealed FOREVER! (But aren’t adoptees dyin’?) Even the the National Council for Adoption in its Piercian anti-adoptee heyday wasn’t that extreme. Continue Reading →
At a time when other states are unsealing the OBC and other documents to adoptees to which they pertain, (Alabama, for instance, restored access in 2000 without incident) Louisiana inexplicably has HB 391 before it, The bill infantilizes adoptees and sends the message that they are not mature or even safe enough to hold a copy of their own birth certificate. The bill suggests that adoptees and adoption are something shameful to be hidden away locked in a government vault. Please do not support HB 391. Vote NO! Continue Reading →
LOUISIANA HOUSE BILL 391 is set to come before the Civil Law & Procedure Committee within the next couple of weeks, (No date set as of this writing). The bill imposes undue restrictions upon adopted persons’ access to a copy of their own original birth certificate, through the implementation of a Confidential Intermediary and mandatory counseling system.
Louisiana Adoptee Rights Campaign (LARC), opposes HB 391. LARC is not a Bastard Nation partner, but we agree with the group’s assessment of the bill.
Please email the sponsor and committee members today and tell them that HB 391 is NOT an adoptee rights bill Continue Reading →
Through those years the most important thing I learned from TLS was critical thinking. I doubt he realized this at the time, and I didn’t either, but he was the beginning of me really thinking about things. Things that mattered. He was way ahead of other people our age. He questioned and challenged and encouraged. Nobody had ever bothered to do that to/for me before. By example he showed me that it’s not only a right but a duty to be who you you are deep inside; not to be molded by other people’s opinions or desires or fantasies. I think he struggled with that himself and came through on the other side. That one is a really hard especially when you’re adopted, and I’m still working on it. Continue Reading →
Bastards! It’s time to pony up to send Bastard Goddesses Marley Greiner and Emm Paul to the rodeo in Denver on March 30, otherwise known as the AAC conference.
Unsurprisingly, adoptee equality doesn’t feature prominently (well, at all) in the conference program. Moreover, someone needs to hold the AAC accountable for their representations of the current legislative landscape and serve as a voice for the left behinds. Marley and Emm will also serve as bastard ambassadors, recruiting new activists. Continue Reading →
The AAC has consistently folded under the slightest pressure to compromise its “principles” in order to get “something passed.” That something has been disclosure vetoes and disclosure vetoes disguised as contract preference forms, contact vetoes, white-outs, redactions, and tiered access based of birth or other factors. Scratch a dirty bill and you’ll find the AAC, an affiliated organization or Indies latching on to AAC examplet. Delaware, New Jersey, Montana, Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Illinois, Missouri, and Washington State are just a few states that have been jammed by AAC-led Deform, Inc’s baby step solutions to the problem of Class Bastard and institutional adoptionism. Getting ones name on a law has been more important than securing adoptee equality. The unfortunate bi-product of this is that the time, money, and energy spent on killing their bad bills could be used to pass clean bills. As a result Bastard Nation, whose mission for the last twenty years has been legal equality and the restoration of OBC and other adoption record access for all adoptees without restriction, gets the rep of the “bad guy.” Groups that claim to agree with our non-compromise position but pile on restrictions, pevaricate to their members and placate special interests and politicians to negate those rights, but mayge cause some personal “reunions” are repped as the “good guy. Continue Reading →
The AAC has consistently folded under the slightest pressure to compromise its “principles” in order to get “something passed.” That something has been disclosure vetoes and disclosure vetoes disguised as contract preference forms, contact vetoes, white-outs, redactions, and tiered access based of birth or other factors. Scratch a dirty bill and you’ll find the AAC, an affiliated organization or Indies latching on to the AAC example. Delaware, New Jersey, Montana, Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Illinois, Missouri, and Washington State are just a few states that have been jammed by AAC-led Deform, Inc’s baby step solutions to the problem of Class Bastard and institutional adoptionism. Getting one’s name on a law has been more important than securing adoptee equality. The unfortunate by-product of this is that the time, money, and energy spent on killing their bad bills could be used to pass clean bills. As a result Bastard Nation, whose mission for the last twenty years has been legal equality and the restoration of OBC and other adoption record access for all adoptees without restriction, gets the rep of the “bad guy.” Groups that claim to agree with our non-compromise position but pile on restrictions, pevaricate to their members and placate special interests and politicians to negate those rights, but maybe cause some personal “reunions” are repped as the “good guy.” Continue Reading →
We have proven that it can be done, while they haven’t done a single thing for adoptee rights. The colonists and deformers need to stop speaking for adoptees. They don’t care about our rights. Look to see who profits in what they do, versus in what Bastards do, and tell us again that WE’RE the “bad guys”. Continue Reading →
While Indiana and Missouri continue to fail, flail and founder on the Sea of Deform, the Hawai’i legislature took the first step yesterday to restore adoption records access with no restrictions to all Hawai’i-born adoptees. In a vote of 13-o-1 (absent) the House Judiciary Committee voted Do Pass on clean HB 2082. All testimony supported the bill with no opposition either submitted or addressed in person. The bill is sponsored by Hawaii adoptee Chris Lee (D-51). It now goes to the House Floor for a vote. A companion Senate bill may be introduced as early as next week. Continue Reading →
Speaking of babydrop boxes, the long awaited baby box bill, SB 3271, has been dropped in the Illinois Senate. The bill won’t legislate baby boxes or determine specs, but it would basicaly set up a study group to investigate the feasibility of boxes–hygienically referred to as “newborn safety incubators”– in Illinois. It’s attached to a short bill to amend the state’s safe haven law.