HB2082 has been transmitted to the Governor! Woot! Please tweet Governor David Ige, @GovHawaii , ask him to sign HB2082 SD 1 into law and thank him for supporting#adopteeequality ! Continue Reading →
Bastard Nation | P. O. Box 9959 | Spokane, WA 99209 | Phone 614-641-0294
Massachusetts H.2045/S.1144 recently passed out of the Joint Committee on Public Health. These companion bills are clean and probably the shortest OBC access bill in history. When enacted they will close the gap between the haves and have nots, the worthies and the unworthies, by restoring the right of all Massachusetts adoptees, without restriction, to their own OBCs.
OBC for MA is not affiliated with Bastard Nation, but we support the bills as written. OBC for MA has requested help in bringing the bill to a full vote on the House and Senate Floors, and we have issued the following action alert and contact information: Continue Reading →
Missouri Adoptee Rights Movement (MARM), continues to stonewall its members, friends, and adoptee rights activists in general on the status of HB 1599, you, know, the “beautiful thing” bill that if passed would strip Missouri adoptees, in the name of “adoptee rights,” of even more rights. As I asked in the lead-up to this debacle, what would Orwell do?
After Bastard Nation partner Missouri Open (MO) published its preliminary report on the Wednesday April 13, 2016 Seniors, Families and Children committee decision to gut more of the already gutted-but-once-clean bill with adoption agency sponsored amendments, MARM remained silent. Although MO posted its statement on the amendments on April 14, 2015 at 12:08 AM MARM did not post theirs until nearly 12 hours later (11:24 AM), and then with a big back pat and a horn toot: Continue Reading →
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 →