Join Bastardette on “What’s Next: The Adoptee Rights Podcast”

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Please join Greg Luce and me for the premiere edition of What’s Next: The Adoptee Rights Podcast. I am thrilled to be his first guest. We cover an array of subjects including the upcoming legislative year, coalition building, Safe Haven Baby Boxes, Bill Pierce, the History of Bastard Nation, and adoptee rights movement history retention–or lack thereof. How typical is that? Even our movement history is a blank slate! We are freaking 69 years old for Pete’s sake, and lots of adopted people still don’t know the movement exists. And, then there’s those deform toxics who declare that “rights” activists are malfeasants that ruin it for everybody. Continue Reading →

Welcome to Legislation 2022 Hell!

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Dear Bastards and Friends: Happy New Year! Welcome to Bastard Nation Legislation 2022 Hell! The Bastard Nation Legislation 2022 page is now up. The political outlook hasn’t changed much from 2021. Granted, Connecticut did free up its OBCs and Massachusetts continued to move forward on its lumbering road to victory, but other than that, 2021 was a disappointing, frustrating, dreary year. Arizona went weird, Maryland zilched, and deformers continued to stumble their baby booties through their own muck. Safe Haven Baby Box bills and Baby Boxes continued to flare up like herpes under the banner of “women demand anonymity,” the feel-good alternative for politicians who cringe over “adoptees demand rights.” Even more dismal, legislatures, blaming Covid, made discovering how to submit written testimony or to present remote or in-person an often unsuccessful endurance test. Bastard Nation, of course, continues our battle. Many state legislatures have yet to open. So far, though, we have several carry-over bills from last year. Most important of those is Massachusetts.HB2394. The bill passed the House last year and now is ensconced in the Senate, where it allegedly has no detractors, We’ll see. The bill is only two sentences long, so lawmakers can’t complain that they Continue Reading →

NAM 2021 is Done and Gone. Now the real work begins–again!

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As I wrote earlier, I was stuck without internet access from November 28-30, and couldn’t post.  But I have this ridiculous sense of duty when it comes to blogging every day for NAM, so I’ve backtracked and backdated to complete the month, to make it look like it’s real. I suppose that’s some kind of a lie, but isn’t that what adoption is all about? It’s certainly no worse than sealed birth certificates, forged new ones, or the lie these happy adoptive parents I  saw at the Dollar General the other day,  are perpetuating by calling themselves Horses when they are really Unicorns. I IrefuI refuse to feel guilty Unfortunately, while NAM is gone, its curse remains. We have a lot to work on. The most important things right now are two new issues. It never stops: (1)  organizing against Justice Amy Coney Barretts’s pawning and dehumanizing of Class Bastard during the Roe hearing a few days ago, and her promotion of  Safe Haven and Safe Haven Baby Box laws as alternatives to abortion. This bullshit has a long history that I’ve written about and will elaborate on more in the next weeks.  Adopted people will not let people like Continue Reading →

My NAM Vacation Reading: Lemony Snicket

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What this means is that their children, Violet, Klaus, and Sunny (a sharp-toothed infant whose main entertainment is biting ) are shipped across town to the genetically distant but geographically close relative Count Olaf, who lives in a
ramshackle house in an otherwise “good neighborhood.”  Count Olaf is very Dicksonian.  He tosses the children into a 1-bed filthy room with a refrigerator box for a closet. He wipes his nose on their drapes. He dresses weird, drab, and ugly.  He sports a tattoo of an eye on his ankle. His actual eyes are oddly shiny. Count Olaf is a theatre person–a master of disguise–with a troupe of creepy actors who do his dirty work and put on bad plays at night. He doesn’t own any books, even a cookbook, which causes a problem when he orders the children to prepare a large roast beef dinner for his actors. “I want roast beef!”  Continue Reading →

Zoom in on Adoptee Concerns: 2 Adoptees United Discussions coming up!

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Bastard Nation friends Greg Luce and Adoptees United hold bi-monthly zoom discussions on topics that concern Class Bastard. and the state of adoption worldwide. I’ve missed a couple of them, for which I kick myself.  I am making a real effort not to over-nap (late afternoon wipes me out) or get otherwise distracted, The next two meetings promise to be insightful and important to us as adopted people and adoptee rights activists. Continue Reading →

South Carolina. OBC Bill Introduced: Retains infantile restrictions

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On November 10, Rep. Robert “RJ” May pre-filed HB 4566 in the House.  The bill amends the state’s current law, passed in 2018 (which started out clean and went down dirty) that permits adoptees, age 18 and over whose adoptions are finalized after July 1, 2019, to obtain a non-certified copy of their OBC  “and “evidence of adoption,”  but only with the consent of the biological parent(s)  That consent is authorized through the submission of a  “Contact Preference Form or other notarized documents. In practical terms, the 2019 law can’t be utilized until 2037, except in cases of older child/foster adoptions. Those adopted before the effective date are forced to file a petition to a state court, a procedure that has a near-zero success rate. Continue Reading →

William Burroughs: A Thanksgiving Prayer–And adoptee adjunct

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Bastardette has had a love affair with William Burroughs since she was 14. His A Thanksgiving Prayer is posted below.  It’s nervy, but I’ve dared to add to the Master’s Voice. I believe it fits nicely after “Thanks for a nation of finks.” Continue Reading →

Adoptee Narrative Expropriation: Some short thoughts

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That said, we know that our personal adoption stories are up for grabs.  First parents, adoptive parents, reporters, adoption agents, social workers, re-homers, facilitators, religious nuts, neo-libs, do-gooders, and outsiders of multiple stripes hijack our stories for their sometimes contradictory and oppositional, own agendas.  I call this Narrative Expropriation. Somebody speaks for us. Somebody pretends to be us. Somebody pretends we share the same histories, opinions, and desires. Somebody uses us to create their own stories. Continue Reading →