The Adopton Industry Does the Innuendo: Misappropriation of Adoptee Rights and the Demonization of Ben Wyrembek

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We can do the innuendo, we can dance and sing When it’s said and done, we haven’t told you a thing We all know that crap is king, give us dirty laundry …Don Henley Thursday night someone on Facebook pointed out that Jason and Christy Vaughn’s Save Grayson! Twitter account promotes their failed attempt to adopt Grayson Wyrembek as an “adoptee rights” issue. I’ve been reading the Vaughn’s Keeping Grayson Home webpage (KGH) and posting on its forum, but I have not seen this outrageous claim promoted there, at least in those words, though the implication is apparent. I checked “Save Grayson!” and sure enough: Save Grayson! @KeepGraysonHome is in His hands Share the love. Support adopted childrens rights & best interests. Always follow back. Call US+404/482-1585. Updates here & on Facebook http://ow.ly/34fdG http://keepinggraysonhome.com The term is qualified as “adopted childrens rights.” But, (1) Grayson was never adopted or even legally available for adoption and (2) the term “adoptee rights” is generally understood to mean the unequivical legal right of adopted adults to their own original birth certificates and other state records about our births and adoptions. “Adoptee rights” is not about the demand of adults to adopt a child Continue Reading →

AdoptaLeaks: Pound Pup Scores JCICS Board Minutes

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I haven’t had a chance to read these yet, but Niels Hoogeveen at Pound Pup Legacy has made a real score: the Minutes of all JCICS board meetings June 17, 2005-August 26, 2009. As Niels points out, somebody forgot to shut the door. They were available through a members only page that… ummm… somebody left open. Roelle Post has written a follow-up on interesting notations on Romania. I’m sure many more comments will come. Watch it, Neils! Our national security thugs will be knocking on your door soon. They’re not Demons of Adoption for nothin‘ You are a True Bastard God! ADDENDA: March 16, 2011: I heard from Niels over the weekend. He wants to clarify that he did not score these documents himself. Pound Pup was informed of the JCISC security leak and it was simply uploaded to the PP page. I want to reiterate, though that Pound Pup is an absolute top-notch source for those of us researching adoption.

Take Yourself Out of the Discourse! My response to Jean Strauss’ HuffPo blog

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November NaBloPoMo is coming to the end, and boy am I glad! I had planned to write some dynamite posts this month, but the task of writing every day (it takes 8-12 hours for me to write one blog usually) just wore me out and my life, such as it is, was put on hold. At the moment my house is a pigsty and both ears are plugged shut with a sinus infection that’s out of control. I am sick of National Adoption Awareness Month and it’s MSM cotton candy puff pieces, fat cat celebrations, and deformers selling our rights up the creek. I don’t remember when I’ve been so sick of adoption as I am tonight. So, I planned originally to write a short Goodbye NAAM blog, until Jean Strauss’s Absurd Dilemmas Caused by Secrets in Closed Adoptions showed up in Huffington Post this afternoon. (Please someone, tell me how does one become a HuffPo blogger!) Here’s my rush job. Benedict Bastard Strauss, who rode into California on her white horse and skeeved out on her ass,( here and California Adoption Reform sidebar) frames her HuffPo essay around the fallacious claim that original birth certificate access is about getting Continue Reading →

National Council for Adoption Gala Pics

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I don’t know if this will work for readers without a Facebook account, but the National Council for Adoption has published an animoto review of the November 18, 2010 30th anniversary, Black Tie & Pearls gala at the Willard on it’s FB page. I recognize Chuck Johnson, the NCFA staff, Michale Barone, Heidi Cox, Mary Landreiu and a couple other guests whose names escape me, but who are those beauty queens and why are they with NCFA? I’m disappointed, but not surprised, that NCFA has suppressed certain activities that occured at the gala and that Bastardette and her crack team of undercover journos clandestinely taped and posted here.

Sara’s Bastards: Feigenholtz Continues to Lie about her "law"

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When Neal Young released his 1979 LP Rust Never Sleeps we doubt if he had Sara Feigenholtz in mind. Yet, that’s the phrase that came to mind when I read Feigenholtz’s latest interview with the press in Saturday’s Springfield State Journal Register and other Gatehouse publications. Corrosion. Corruption. Decay. Listen to Sara: I think that non-adopted people take the right to know the first chapter of their life for granted … To know where you came from is a basic human right. Feigenholtz’s HB 5428, which she claims restores the right of original birth certificate access to Illinois adoptees, guarantees no such right–unless she considers playing wack-a-mole and Mother May I with state functionaries and birthparents and filling out War and Peace-length government forms how the non-adopted exercise their actual right to access their own birth certificates, Listen to Sara: We have to stop stigmatizing adoption. Adoption is a beautiful thing. We have nothing to be ashamed of. This legislation turns the corner on the stigmatizing of adoption. From an email sent by Feigenholtz or a member of her staff, to Washington State bastard activist Lori Jeske, after Jeske objected to HB 5429’s failure to recognize obc access as a Continue Reading →

Natural Mother Experience in Film: a Brief Review of D W Griffith and the Grammar of Film Adoption

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I’ve run short of time today, so to keep up the pace I’m posing here part of my study of adoption in film. This is first part of my longerl Where We Came From that I presented at the ASAC conference in Tampa in 2005, though this part was not included in the final draft. It stands on it’s own, though, there is much more to say about Griffith’s “bastard/adoption” work. ****** Many adoption films are family melodramas, and from the earliest films, the wronged woman and her child – wronged by husbands and fathers, parents, reformers or social workers – have been the subject of film. The study of American adoption film starts with D. W. Griffith. Griffith’s artistic view was more than loosely Victorian with values drawn from the antebellum South, theatrical melodrama, and Populist agrarianism. Griffith was a notorious melodramatist even when traditional melodrama was out of style; a non-Marxist advocate for the oppressed and powerless; an upholder of the bourgeois family as the ideal. He was against the forces of reform and the hypocritical “uplifters” whom he mercilessly attacked his films. The subject of many Griffith films is the interpersonal drama of the family within its Continue Reading →

BJ Lifton: New York Times Obit

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Today’s New York Times offered a featured obit on BJ Lifton who died last week of complications of Pneumonia: Betty Jean Lifton Dies at 84; urged open adoptions. Although the obit conflated open adoption and open records, it’s an otherwise good review of BJ’s life. I had no idea she was 84. I’m bad a age. I thought early to mid 70s. When “Twice Born” was first published, there were few books about the adoptee experience. Adoption in general was a veiled topic, and adoptees — assuming they were told anything — rarely knew their given names, their birth parents’ identities or the precise circumstances of their adoptions. As a result, generations of adoptees grew up with a void where their personal histories should be and, Ms. Lifton argued, with deep feelings of confusion, grief and loss. “When I was born, society prophesied that I would bring disgrace to my mother, kill her reputation, destroy her chances for a good bourgeois life,” she wrote in “Twice Born.” She added: “I say that society, by sealing birth records, by cutting adoptees off from their biological past, by keeping secrets from them, has made them into a separate breed, unreal even to Continue Reading →

Adopt Me: Adopt a Turkey

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CNN reported At Thanksgiving, Some adopt a turkey rather than eating one. Like in any proper adoption, volunteers must pass a screening process. Although it’s not a requirement, a majority of them are vegetarians or vegans. The individuals must have an adequate facility to care for the bird, such as a barn or a sizable yard. The organization prefers adoptive “parents” who don’t have other domestic animals or children who might chase turkeys. The nonprofit will deliver the turkey to the adoptive homes. In fact, it seems that adopting a turkey is more humane and professional than our current adoption process: From the Adopt-a-Turkey Project we find more (my emphasis): Since 1986, Farm Sanctuary has rescued more than 1,000 turkeys, placed hundreds into loving homes through our annual Turkey Express adoption event, educated millions of people about their plight, and provided resources for a cruelty-free holiday. For a one-time $30 donation, anyone can sponsor turkeys residing at Farm Sanctuary. Sponsor a turkey and receive a special adoption certificate in your name – or give sponsorships as gifts for family and friends. Donations are also needed to support our lifesaving efforts to promote a compassionate Thanksgiving and protect all farm animals. Continue Reading →

National Adoption Day: Stats and Shame

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Last Friday. November 18 was National Adoption Day. Baby Love Child, in her blog for that day, National Adoption Day: A celebration of sealed records & inequality, wrote in part: “National Adoption Day” must be recognized for what it is from the adoptees’ perspective rather than the adoption industry’s perspective; it represents the single largest number of sealed records of any day of the calendar year. A collective loss of thousands of kids original identities one stroke of a pen at a time. I had never thought of NAD specifically working in those terms: the single largest number of sealed records of any day of the calendar year. BLC pointed out that by the end of the week culminating with NAD, approximatley 4500 children would be adopted. Except for those adopted in the six free states, all of them will have their identities and histories obliterated by the state forever with the impounding and sealing of their birth cetificates. Unless, that is, we can fix it. It kinda made me sick. Making me sicker is the number of obcs that have been sealed alone on that “special” day since NAD’s inception in 2000. According to the Tri-State Defender: more than Continue Reading →

Blank Slate 2: More Texas Shenighans for National Adoption Awareness Month!

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Sunday I reported that the Texas Attorney General’s office claims that paps and adopters have no legal right to know the background of the children they intend to adopt. This isn’t the end of of the story! After WFAA broke the initial story of ‘Phillip” and “Lisa’s” fight with Texas authorities to get background information on the four children they were trying to adopt, the station says it received numerous emails “detailing similar problems.” Today, right in the middle of National Adoption Awareness Month, WFAA broadcast another case of Texas Department of Family and Protective Services shenanigans. This time it’s the story of “Michelle” and “Dave” who seven months ago tried to adopt two brothers, 5 and 7, from the state system. Records sent by the Department indicated the boys had no history of abuse or disturbing or disruptive behavior outside of “tantrums.” Soon after placement, however, the older boy began to rage for hours, punch himself in the face until his nose bled, and continually screamed that he would kill his new family. Knives and scissors were locked up. The article fails to mention if the couple contacted DFPS. We assume they did, but it looks like they didn’t Continue Reading →