Actions Speak Louder than Words: The Evan B. Donaldson Strikes Out on HuffPo

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Wednesday (January 12) the Huffington Post published a blog, A Civil Right: Adoptees Have a Right to Access Their Own Birth Certificates by Adam Pertman, director of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute. In it, Mr. Pertman calls for the restoration of the right of adoptees to their own original birth certificates. Or does he? Only after 3 1/2 paragraphs, in which Mr. Pertman discusses slavery, suffrage and DADT, does he get around to adoptees (not bastards) and our obcs. To the casual reader, with little or no background on deformist history, the piece may make a good read. Unfortunately it isn’t. Mr. Pertman simply continues the Donaldson’s spurious claim to support obc access for all, while it happily works for passage of bills that restrict access for some, leaving classes of bastards behind to float in a black hole. For instance, last year Mr. Pertman delivered eloquent testimony before a New Jersey House committee hearing declaring the right of all adoptees, without restriction, to their original birth certificates Unfortunately, he was testifying in support of A1406, a deform bill that contains disclosure and contact vetoes (even worse, used interchangeably; that is, a poor bastard with a contact veto slapped Continue Reading →

My Unicorn by Guest Blogger Justin Mitchell Bennett

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Another year draws to a close, and thankfully, another Christmas has passed. I have never been one to celebrate Christmas, and perhaps the most memorable, and darkest had been the one experienced, December 24th, 2006. I’d sat atop Twin Peaks, in San Francisco, California, the cold wind that night chilling me to the bone. As I’d ridden a motorcycle there, I couldn’t just hop into a car and turn on the heater. For many, Christmas may be a time to be among family, yet that evening. I’d never felt so isolated, and alone – as though the chill of death surrounded me. I had returned from an Iraq deployment earlier in the year, and though I would depart San Francisco shortly into 2007, during my time in San Francisco, I’d made progress, on a lifelong quest, which to an adoptee, may be referred to as “The Search.” Perhaps part of what made that Christmas so dark for me, I had reunited, via telephone, with one half of my biological family, an Uncle. Sadly, I’d been informed of my birth father passing away. Mourning the death of someone you’d never known, and whose passing had occurred years prior, coupled with understanding Continue Reading →

Check out Once was Von: Interview with Joanne Wolf Small

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Blogger Von has a nice interview with long-time bastard rights activist Joanne Wolf Little, Adoption Mystique, titled after Joanne’s hard hitting book of the same name. I was “introduced” to Joanne in 1980, via an article she’d written in a psych publication a few years earlier. She was the first person I ever “knew” who politicized the adoption experience and articulated how we’d been screwed and bastaradized by the state After I read Adoption Mystique, I thought, she’s said it all! What can we add to it? Damn! I really liked Joanne’s answer to Von’s question: Do you believe the stigma of adoption and of illegitimacy have changed” but I’ll let you go over there and read her reply yourself. Joanne is a long time member of Bastard Nation and a member of Bastard Nation’s Legislative Committee. In 2007 I wrote about Joanne here (scroll down).

Bastard Nation Action Alert: Write NJ Legislators Today; Vote NO on A1406/S799!

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Distribute Freely BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT! STOP DISCLOSURE VETO/WHITE OUT LEGISLATION IN NEW JERSEY!!! ASK THE NEW JERSEY ASSEMBLY: VOTE NO ON A1406/S799 Read full text of A1406 here.Read full text of S799 here A1406 (companion to S799 already passed in the NJ Senate) is scheduled for a floor vote sometime in the next few weeks. Proponents of this bad bill hoped to have it on the schedule for a January 6, 2011 vote, but it’s not on the list. Please contact Assembly members immediately and urge them to VOTE NO ON A1406/S799. (Contact information below.) If you are from or in New Jersey or have a New Jersey connection, mention it in your communication. Be sure to put: “Vote No On Adoptee Birthright Bill “in the header Bastard Nation’s letter to the Assembly is here. A1406/S799 is: restrictive, discriminatory, creates a new, special and temporary ”right” for “birthparents,” and exempts the state’s adopted adults from equal protection and treatment regarding the release of the government-generated public record of their births. THE BILL *includes a 12- month open enrollment period, starting after the Department of Health releases regs for A1406/S799 implementation, that allows “birthparents,” to file disclosure vetoes (DV) before Continue Reading →

Bastard Nation Letter to NJ Legislature: Vote No on A1406/S799

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Dear __________: Privilege is the opposite of right Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization is the largest adoptee civil rights organization in the United States. We support full, unrestricted access for all adopted persons, upon request, of their own true, unaltered original birth certificates (OBC). We oppose A1406/S799: the Adoptees’ Birthright Bill. A1406/S799 permits some New Jersey adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates. Others, through the compromise language of the birthparent disclosure veto, will receive only a false and mutilated government document with the name and address of the parent(s) bureaucratically excised by the Department of Health and Senior Services by order of the birthparent(s). Bastard Nation rejects this special veto right of “birthparents” to remove their names from the birth certificates of their own adult offspring. No other parent has that right. Why should “birthparents,” whose parental rights were terminated decades ago, have different rights and rules? A1406/S799 is promoted as an “adoptees’ birthright” and OBC “access bill.” Unfortunately, it is neither. The bill reinforces out-dated adoption secrecy through the disclosure veto. It also seals by default, the OBCs of babies surrendered under the state’s “safe haven” program (apparently whether they are adopted later Continue Reading →

Happy New Year 2011: Guy Lombardo Can Save Us

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New Year’s Eve any year. eechhhh!!!!! Another year gone. Nothing accomplished. Things, in fact, have probably gotten worse. They did in 2010 and most certainly 2011 will be a nightmare. And all those people on drink and drugs tooting in the new year with screeching horns and ugly hats made in China. I spent several NYEs walking the neighborhood contemplating throwing myself into oncoming traffic. One of my few NYE respites occurred when the Russians were in residence. We’d throw Russian New Year’s feasts with black bread, blini, mushroom soup, beet salad, cheese, cold cuts, boiled potatoes, and ham. (The Russians did the cooking.) And lots of vodka and champagne and toasts with every round. We’d call our friends in St. Petersburg, 8 hours ahead of us, and scrape them off the floor. The only thing that can bring New Year’s Eve to its deserved glory is Guy Lombardo. Not that I was a huge fan of Guy Lombardo growing up, but when he died anything good about New Year’s Eve died with him. The great Lombardo was replaced with Dick Clark (with Ryan Seacrest and the vomitrocious Jenny MacCarthy), Carson Daley–and OMG, Megan Kelly on Fox– and a cheezy Continue Reading →

In Memory of Jack Jennings Reese, My Father

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My father Jack Jennings Reese died Tuesday night. He was 83. I was never supposed to know his name. I was never supposed to know him. That’s what adoption means. Jack’s name was not on my original birth certificate. My “non-ID” from Toledo Crittenden helpfully informed me that my father was a man. Oh, and that he had blue eyes, was a high school drop-out, working class, and Protestant. (That last part is a stretch. I don’t think he was an atheist, but he had no quarter with organized religion. He refused to be baptized.) He must have been from Akron, since that’s where my mother lived. I got that information in 1980. Not until 1996, however, did I learn in a letter from my mother, Jack’s initials: JR. As in Ewing. That small slice of information was treasured. It meant, as it can only mean to the adopted, that I wasn’t dropped out of a UFO or born in a cabbage patch. I wasn’t an immaculate conception. I already knew I had a mother, of course, but now I had a father. In Akron. Or someplace. It turned out to be Buffalo. . My mother described Jack as “nice Continue Reading →

Bastard Nation Letter to NJ Gov. Chris Christie – Please Veto S799/A1399

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I’ll be blogging on the current situation in New Jersey in a couple days, as well as posting a Bastard Nation Action alert regarding S799/A1399. In the meantime, here is the letter BN sent to Gov. Chris Christie asking him to veto the bill if it’s hits his desk. Governor Chris Christie Office of the Governor PO Box 001 Trenton, NJ 08625 PLEASE VETO S799/A1399: the Adoptees’ Birthright Bill Dear Governor Christie: Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America, opposes S799/A1399: The Adoptees’ Birthright bill. We ask you to veto it if it comes to your desk. The bill is currently awaiting a vote on the House Floor on January 6 or 20, 2011. If passed, this bill will permit some of New Jersey’s adopted adults to receive their true and accurate original birth certificates. Others, through the compromise language of this bill, will receive only a false and mutilated certificate with the name and address of the parent(s) bureaucratically excised by the Department of Health and Senior Services by order of the birthparent(s). Bastard Nation rejects this newly created special right of birthparents to remove their names from the birth certificates–the Continue Reading →

Life’s Not Fair: I’m Still Waiting for my Pony…

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…and abandoned Sumatran orangutan Silvestre, 11 months, got a trans-Atlantic cruise. The Daily Mail reports that Sly had great time in his 4-bed 1st class cabin he shared with Maribel Bustiamente, his Santilla (Spain) zookeeper who was escorting him to his new home at Monkey World, an ape rescue center in Dorset. He got to meet passengers and crew and swing from table to chair to bunk ladders. The Mail reported that Silvestre was abandoned by his mother after his zoo birth. She “put him down and walked away.” Since then, Silvestre has been bottlefed and cared for by zookeepers. According to Chris Jones, spokesperson for Brittany Ferries, “because Silvestre, was so young and has been separated from his mother, he had to be near his keeper all the time he was traveling.” Dr. Alison Cronin, director of Monkey World, told The Mail, “At a year old it is a perfect time for him to move in full-time with other orangutans where he can develop physically and mentally with his own kind.” Now anybody who knows me knows that I’m not into the junk science that imbues contemporary adoption. but I’m fascinated that an 11-month old orangutan gets more consideration Continue Reading →

A Merry Spike Jones Christmas

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I grew up with Spike Jones in the house. Even after probably a thousand listenings of Cocktails for Two, I still find it hilarious. Especially the 1945 video I’ve linked here. I intended to put up All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth, but then I ran across Mommy, Won’t You Buy a Baby Brother, which I’d never heard before. It’s oh so appropriate for a Merry AdoptionLand Christmas.