Cognitive Dissonance: Bastards, Birthers, and Bad Bills

Adopted adults, especially since 9/11, have increasingly been denied passports, drivers licenses, pensions, Social Security benefits, professional certifications, and security clearances due to discrepancies on their fictive amended birth certificates produced by the state, and their inability to produce a true original birth certificate to respond to those discrepancies. Now, due to our lack of an OBC, we may not be allowed to run for president or vice president (or other offices) if some states have their way. Currently, 11 state legislatures are looking at bills to force presidential/vp candidates to divvy up their birth certificates to prove citizenship and that they are who they say they are. If these measures pass, the birth certificate requirement will no doubt seep down to all elective offices from city council and county commission to state and federal legislatures and courts. Although voters are already required to show proof of citizenship when they register to vote, I don’t think it’s beyond reason that more stringent requirements will be mandated; thus potentially disenfranchising millions of the country’s adopted adults due to lack of their “real” birth certificates. The highly unpopular Real ID,which about two dozen states have refused to implement. and other Draconian “security Continue Reading →

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

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 →