I plan to post another entry today, but in the meantime….it’s time for Krampus again. This is my Krampus post from last year: Here comes Krampus I posted three Krampus videos with it. I’ve been searching all over YouTube for a new Krampus video for 2009, but all I can find so far are home videos of questionable artistic merit. I’ll keep looking, but for newcomers, here’s my favorite video from last year. It’s so adoption related.
Just in time for Christmas! The perfect gift for closet-hiding birthparents leaving in fear that their bastard may return to piss of their porch or worse over the holidays. Protect your 2nd Amendment Right to shoot your bastard before it shoots you! THE BACK UP Buy one for each side of your bed. Don’t let your bastard ruin your life! Act Now!
There’s a good discussion on the New York Times Motherlode Adopted children, by the numbers. Blogger Lisa Belkin sure does know how to piss off bastards! Some of our friends are posting including regular Bastardette commenters. I’ve posted twice so far. My last response, which I’m re-posting here, is in a reply to #14 PW: Based upon their negative comments, I am curious if the adult adoptee commenters feel they would have been better off had they NOT being adopted? Here’s what I said: Whether someone feels if they’d been better off not being adopted isn’t the point. What we are talking about here is the systematic, state-facilitated erasure of identity and history from the adopted and the continued discrimination adoptees are subjected to as a result. While there are definitely psychological/identity issues for many who are adopted, I’m speaking specifically of legal discrimination. First and foremost, the sealing of our birth certificates from ourselves. Adoptees are the only class of people who the government forbids from accessing their own birth certificates. The original birth certificates of adoptees are impounded by the state when an adoption is finalized, sealed, and held under lock by government authorities. States, in fact, keep Continue Reading →
Oh Oh! The English language edition of Deutsche Welle, the expat The Local out of Hamburg, and dozens of German language media sources this weekend reported that the German Council on Ethics has called for the closing of the country’s 80 Babyklappen (Baby Flaps/Baby Hatches). In American lingo: anonymous birth and baby dumping. Deutsche Welle reported that the Council called babyklappen “illegal,”while The Local says “morally ‘problematic.” The babyklappen statement itself is not posted on The Council’s website, so we must go with news reports. The Local quotes the statement: But on Thursday the Council said that the hatches, which parents have used to give up some 500 babies so far, should be closed because the most at-risk women fail to use them and they deny children the right to know their origins. “The German Ethics Council suggests that pregnant women and mothers in emergency situations be aided as much as possible without damaging the rights of others – their children in particular,” a statement said. Deutchse Welle reported (my emphasis): But most of the 26-person ethics committee, which includes scientists and legal experts and church leaders, did not agree [with the minority of the committee that opposed the statement.] Continue Reading →
I was going to write about something else today, but I’m going to fix dinner and go read a book that has nothing to do with adoption. The rest can wait. In the meantime, check out what Troy Dunn has to say about NCFA founding agency, the Gladney Center over on Lorraine Dusky’s First Mother, Birth Mother Forum under The Worst Adoption Agency in the World: Gladney. Dunn posted a comment to an earlier entry from Lorraine about the repulsive HufPo piece, Adopting a New Attitude, by the repulsive faux feminist and adopter Peggy Drexler. Lorraine has reposted Dunn’s entire comment now in a separate entry. I know that some people don’t care for Dunn, but what he says about Gladney records “practice” is important to get out to as many people as possible. Dunn, writing on why he takes few Gladney search cases told Lorraine: The reason for our hesitancy is simple- the majority of the cases we have reviewed/researched/solved from Edna Gladney were stuffed full of pages and pages of falsified documents. And then goes into detail. Can anyone doubt that Gladney is the first cousin of Georgia Tann? I have an article on Dame Edna published in Continue Reading →
Adoption law scholar Elizabeth Samuels has a letter in Saturday’s Washington Post in response to TV critic Tom Shales scathing review of Find My Family: The family weep-stakes. I agree with his broader critique of the show and its reality porn genre, but did Shales have to muck up his cultural criticism with a cheap shot at first parents Sandy and Scotty Steinpas: Then the Steinpases decided to forget about the legally binding agreement they’d signed in 1979, pledging not to search for their former baby or upset her home life. Why should Scotty and Sandy let a nasty old contract get in the way of their whims? WTF??? Of all the complaints I could raise about Find My Family, some alleged breech of contract is as far away from my radar as Antoine Vermette’s reaction to the latest Columbus Blue Jacket’s loss. To show how far away that is, I had to look up the Bluejacket’s roster to come up with his name to write that last sentence. Shales sees himself as a latter-day Gilbert Seldes. He treats TV like it’s theatre or film–an admirable, but in the case of Voyeur TV–absurdist endeavour. Reality porn is not Man of Continue Reading →
I’m doing some editing and research today. I don’t have much time and asked the Bad Cats, Abbie and Jonathan, to write my blog. As foundlings themselves, they are very sensitive about adoption, especially their own. All we know of their past is that their mother, suspected of being an undocumented Siamese, was allegedly run over by a horse trailer in West Virginia when they were but a few days old. The babies, and their brother Tiger, were rescued by Bruce, Brenda, and Sean and, brought to Columbus. Eventually they ended up with me. The kitties wanted to tell their own story. They spent the day scouring the ‘net hunting down possible relatives and friends of their mother Unfortunately, their drive-by dad is unknown. Everyone they talked to either clammed up at the words,” Iz youz my famblieez?” or told them to “shutz yer trap, be grateful you iz in Columbus, Ohio and not on a farm outside of Buckhannon eating micees.” The poor kitties were so traumatized they had to double up on catnip and take to their respective beds in their respective rooms. (They suffer huge attachment issues and refuse to share a bed, much less a dinner.) Continue Reading →
I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. Since Bastardette regards cooking something people are paid to do, BF Bastard and I did China Dynasty this year. Big Chinese buffet along with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, and some knockout maple syrup mashed sweet potatoes. I considered taking pictures of my meal to post here, but that’s just so….Facebook! Since everyone is saying how grateful they are this season, I suppose I should add my two cents: I am not grateful for the legislatures of 44 states and their industry bullies and hangers-on that continue to treat bastards as chattel. I’m grateful, however, for my Bastardette buddies, Bastard Nation, good friends, family, and the Bad Cats. But most of all, I’m grateful for celebrity adopters, the true heroes of National Adoption Awareness Month. Without them, adoption would be as popular as the wringer washer, the buggy whip, and beta videos. Their altruistic acts of child gathering are an inspiration to middle America. Adoption = upward mobility. There’s a little bit of Hollywood in each of us, and what better way to live like a star than to adopt. Jim Hamilton posted this on nu.adult.adoption on Facebook and it’s worth Continue Reading →
In Columbus this summer a Grove City-area woman “surrendered” her newborn (and on Bastardette) into the Ohio “safe haven” program. Later, she and her mother talked to Columbus Dispatch reporter Rita Price about what had happened According to them, the 20-year old mother agreed to the “safe haven” under the influence of delivery-room medication. She received no counseling and was under the impression that “safe haven was a “Christian adoption program” not an anonymous baby mill. Naturally, officials at Doctors Hospital have refused comment. Last we heard, the mother had gone to court to retrieve her baby. (I am working on a longer piece on this case and ODJFS shenanigans for here and broader publication). This woman is one of the very few “safe haven” mothers who have been granted a public voice, be it ever so small. Now, we have another voice: Melissa from Michigan. Melissa sent her story to blogger Baby Love Child, in response to an earlier entry on “safe haven” mislabeling.” While her comments remain on that entry, BLC has also posted them together with a short commentary in a separate entry A Critical Perspective on Baby Safe Haven Baby Dump Programs. Melissa tells us that Continue Reading →
Did any of you watch Find My Family last night? It’s the talk of the AdoptaSphere. “Unfortunately,” I didn’t. The CRAZY HOUSEGUEST commandeered my TV to download off his Play Station (or whatever he does) a lecture by some crackpot talking about lizard people who colonized earth a million years ago, circle the earth eternally to”protect” their half-blood progeny (us), and promise to unplug the Federal Reserve if things get too dicey. They also oppose the European Union and Barrack Obama. (I am NOT kidding) It’s always folly to talk about a TV show you haven’t seen, but since this is my blog I’ll do it anyway. So far, the reaction in AdoptionLaLaLand to Find My Family, except for Lorraine Dusky who liked it, has been a lot of “triggering” and weeping over reunion, even if adoptaviewers claim they hate the show. Beat me. It feels so good. I figure Find My Family must be pretty bourgeois since do-gooders aren’t complaining as they did over Who’s Your Daddy, which, with its big boobed adoptee/soft porn actress on the make, truly was fun. (NOTE to the National Council for Adoption and The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute: Nobody cares what you Continue Reading →