One day he told me that he was ready to die more or less, and couldn’t wait to get to heaven “so I can talk to God about adoption for eternity.” Continue Reading →
On January 23, 2018, The Academy of Adoption and Assisted Reproduction Attorneys (formerly known as the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys–Quad A) did the unthinkable. The traditional adversary of the adoptee rights movement came over to the dark side. It endorsed the right of Class Bastard to our own adoption records. In fact, AAARA went a lot further than OBC access. Taking a page from the Bastard Nation Handbook, it resolved: Continue Reading →
This is too funny! Adoptee equality is anti-adoption! Adoptee equality is the internet’s fault! At least he left out his seriously weird comment on alt.adoption that it should be illegal to look up names in the phone book. Continue Reading →
Bastards! It’s time to pony up to send Bastard Goddesses Marley Greiner and Emm Paul to the rodeo in Denver on March 30, otherwise known as the AAC conference.
Unsurprisingly, adoptee equality doesn’t feature prominently (well, at all) in the conference program. Moreover, someone needs to hold the AAC accountable for their representations of the current legislative landscape and serve as a voice for the left behinds. Marley and Emm will also serve as bastard ambassadors, recruiting new activists. Continue Reading →
The AAC has consistently folded under the slightest pressure to compromise its “principles” in order to get “something passed.” That something has been disclosure vetoes and disclosure vetoes disguised as contract preference forms, contact vetoes, white-outs, redactions, and tiered access based of birth or other factors. Scratch a dirty bill and you’ll find the AAC, an affiliated organization or Indies latching on to the AAC example. Delaware, New Jersey, Montana, Ohio, Indiana, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Illinois, Missouri, and Washington State are just a few states that have been jammed by AAC-led Deform, Inc’s baby step solutions to the problem of Class Bastard and institutional adoptionism. Getting one’s name on a law has been more important than securing adoptee equality. The unfortunate by-product of this is that the time, money, and energy spent on killing their bad bills could be used to pass clean bills. As a result Bastard Nation, whose mission for the last twenty years has been legal equality and the restoration of OBC and other adoption record access for all adoptees without restriction, gets the rep of the “bad guy.” Groups that claim to agree with our non-compromise position but pile on restrictions, pevaricate to their members and placate special interests and politicians to negate those rights, but maybe cause some personal “reunions” are repped as the “good guy.” Continue Reading →
We have proven that focused, energized civil rights campaigns can win. Yet, today we are sitting in the midst of corporate America–the Hard Rock Cafe– amongst a sea of adoption tweakers, self-defeaters, self- promoters, and neocons, who have never passed a “clean bill,” having a bizarre discussion over what we can learn about adoption (or open records?) from Oprah Winfrey–or so it was billed. This is the most bizarre adopta meeting since Ron Morgan, Bill Pierce, and Troy Dunn hooked up in LA to go on the Dr. Laura Show. We know how to restore adoptee access to our OBCs.. The only question now should be: why isn’t everybody following the model? Continue Reading →