Ya gotta hand it to those folks in the Great White North. Ontario, that is. With a white-gloved right hand they promise to neatly guide Ontario adoptees along the slippery slope of legal equality then left hook ’em down just when they think they’re safe as a lego.
Bill 183, currently residing in the Ontario Parliament’s Social Policy Committee, at first glance appears to be a “progressive” piece of open records legislation. Technically it is. If passed, adopted persons 18 or older will receive an uncertified copy of their original birth certificate, information in tact, upon request. Birth parents can also receive information, including the amended birth certificate, after the kid is 19. But there’s a catch. Birth parents and adoptees alike can submit a contact veto–a de facto restraining order to prohibit contact– against the other, sight unseen for no good reason–which in effect criminalizes the ill-bred bastard or pushy birth parent who has committed no crime other than to be biologically related to the other. I guess nobody wants to perch on a pissed-on porch on Christmas morning. And don’t get them started on the axe wielding proclivities of adoptees.
Oh, and adoptive parents can also file a veto, too, if the adoptee has a sibling under the age of 18. What’s that about?
To assure social tranquility, the Toronto nannies propose a fine of $50,000 (CD) for any individual who breaks the contact veto and $250,000 (CD) for any corporation, which we assume means professional searchers or other corporate malcontents, who do likewise. Holy Tennessee! At least they won’t be jack-booted off to jail. Canadians are too nice for that. Trust me. Bastardette once spent a week at a Florida fish camp with a couple hundred of them, but we’ll hold that story for another day.
If you think bankrupting people for talking to their own relatives is bad, take a gander at the arguments against the bill.
Outside of braying about the “right to privacy” which politicians invariably translate into a “right to anonymity,” a trail of “broken promises” (promises which never existed), whinging over retroactive law-making (as if they’d never done it before), and a weird discussion about the names (or lack thereof) of fathers on birth certificates (is somebody a little worried?) that trails off to nowhere, a read-into-the-record Miss Maners plea from a constituent of Member Klees, caught Bastardette’s eye. Claiming to speak for Ontario’s “thousands of voiceless and defenceless adoptees and adoptive parents” Mr. Anonymous Narcissist writes in part:
We are a tolerant, dutiful and hopefully caring family, but sir, we do have a distinction from other families in our circle. We are all adoptees: both generations. Our children have never been told that they are adopted, and my wife and I, being only children, have never told our friends, business and professional associates or neighbours.
“We have enjoyed the anonymity our silence and right to privacy has afforded us and our children. We were never subjected to the systemic prejudices the adopted suffer in humiliating silence almost every day. When we did poorly in school, no teacher ever raised their eyebrow in that knowingly condescending fashion and asked, `Oh, would Johnny be adopted?’ When our parents died, we were not singled out by the Toronto Star as `the adopted children of.’ We were instead listed as `the loving children of.’
“We were never actually told we were adopted ourselves until our parents passed away, and by that time we had become the sum collective of their beings and were content to be so. Our children have been raised as our own, as in fact we were, and they are the inheritors of all that our parents once were and loved and all that my wife and I hold to be dear.
Now Bastardette is no big fan of chain of abuse theory, but what in the world is this: chain of stupidity? “We didn’t know we were adopted and we don’t want to know anything about it anyway, so why should our kids or anybody else–eh? They should be as grateful and deliriously happy as we are.” More suspiciously, what are the chances of two well-mannered white picket LDAs hooking up, later learning they are adopted, and adopting two kids who they plan to keep in as dark a place as they were kept? It’s things like this that tempt Bastardette to support bad legislation just to annoy them. Sentence these hosers, whoever, they are, to 27 years of hard time in family therapy. Please!
And while we’re at it, let people take responsibility for their own relationships. Don’t ask the government to do it for you.
Those words you quoted are from Frank Klees – an Ontario MPP.
He says that he has not told his adopted children that they are not adopted.
I told him that lying to anyone about anything is right. It is even worse when someone you trust to tell you the truth all the time lies to you in this manner.
I pointed out that the law is not there to protect liars.
Do you know what he said?
“It isn’t lying – it is love”!!!
I asked “what about medical information”..
He said it was HIS job to decide what his adopted children should know – even as adults!!!!
He said that keeping their adoption a secret was more important than health issues!!!
He said that the law should protect his “deception” because he is a “loving” parent.
Yeah, right – so loving that he would rather someone die than expose a “secret” to save them!!
According to adopters like Frank Klees, “lying is not lying, it is love to not let them know. It is the act of a loving parent”.
He has put this into Hansard, so how secret is that anyway??
Pass the sick bucket!!!
Re: previous message – I meant to say that Frank Klees has not told his children that they are adopted (in case you were confused!)
He says he will NEVER tell them – and that they should be grateful for that.
(difficult to be grateful for something that you don’t know about?? especially if it endangers your life from lack of medical info)