NEW JERSEY: MY CAUSE IS BETTER THAN YOURS. ADOPTEES V GAYS

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A letter in support (I think) of A572 appeared in Thursday’s My NewJersey.com. The writer, Cpt. Peter W. Franklin, believes that adoptee rights are being run over by gay marriage rights. He writes: After decades of debate and compromise, adoption reform should not be sidelined simply because a few prominent Democrat officials insist that this is the “right time” for gay marriage. I simply cannot imagine that denying someone the right to a ceremony can be as cruel and reckless as denying someone their true identity and access to family medical history. The hierarchy of pain has been a big deal in AdoptionLand for as long as I’ve been around. We share Cpt. Franklin’s pain that adoptee rights is not a priority issue with Joisy politicians–or even for the NJCare Krampi who claim to be the voice of NJ adoptee rights. Pushing one cause against the other, however, doesn’t help anything. It only alienates. Who’s to say whose “pain” is greater, or even if there is any “pain?” (Bastardette knows lots of painfree bastards,) There is no relationship between obc access and gay marriage for Pete’s sake. Whining about somebody trying to get something that you have by default is Continue Reading →

BASTARD NATION’S LETTER TO NJ HOUSE SPEAKER JOSEPH ROBERTS, JR–PLEASE OPPOSE A 752. ADOPTEE DESERVE RIGHTS NOT FAVORS!

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December 10, 2009 Dear Speaker Roberts: Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization, the largest adoptee civil rights organization in North America opposes A752. We ask that this bill be left to die in committee at the end of this term, without a hearing. If it is heard and passed out of committee, we ask that the bill be voted down on the floor. If passed, this bill will permit some New Jersey 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 the special 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 have different rules? Since 1999 four states have restored to adoptees the unrestricted right to records and identity access: OregonAlabama, New Hampshire, and Maine through legislation. Why should New Jersey buck the tide and pass a bill that continues to treat adoptee access to their own birth certificates Continue Reading →

NEW JERSEY: ANYTHING TO GET A BILL PASSED. WE LEAVE EVERYBODY BEHIND!

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Just in time for Krampus (see below) we have New Jersey’s A752 “adoptee rights” bill. Sponsored by NJCare, (aka The Krampi) A752 (aka The Krampus Bill) is one of the worst throw-our-rights away bills on record. The bill, of course, contains the compromiser’s favorite compromise, the “birthparent” disclosure veto. But wait, there’s more! In order to make this veto work, the state extorts a family/medical history from closeted parents. Kind of a pay to play scam. If parents don’t submit the government mandated snoop form in 60 days, then The Bastard gets the obc. Sounds like a violation of HIPAA to me. But wait, there’s more! A752 also contains the whiteout “alternative” that will give adoptees, slapped with a veto, an “original birth certificate” that’s been mutilated by a government censor with a glob of white-out smeared over identifying information including their own names, and the parental addresses at the time of birth. But wait, there’s more! The Krampus Bill automatically seals the obc of all persons anonymously dumped under the state’s “safe haven” law, even if one or both parents are identified on the obc (one of baby dumping’s dirty little secrets). See, a safe haven dump, coerced out Continue Reading →

IT’S KRAMPUS TIME AGAIN!

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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.

SOS! NYT AND ABC FORUMS NEED BASTARD RESCUE

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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 →

BABYKLAPPE NEIN DANKE! GERMAN ETHICS COUNCIL SAYS NO TO BABY DUMPING

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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 →

TROY DUNN TALKS ABOUT GLADNEY AND RECORDS

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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 →

"FIND MY FAMILY" REDUX

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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 →

KITTIES SPEAK OUT ABOUT ADOPTION

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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 →