19 Replies to “Top Ten Reasons to Oppose CHIFF”

1. There are only four reasons anyone truly want to stop CHIFF; Money, Prejudice, Stupidity, and my favorite, Sheer Heartlessness.

   When I look into the eyes of my little girl everyday, I cant fathom how any kind compassionate human being would want to keep any child from receiving love, let alone millions, shame on you.

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   • You clearly need to spend more time peering into the eyes of the victims of careless adoption practice; you need to spend more time w/ children who have been rehomed – some repeatedly – in the most dangerous transactions imaginable; you need to pay more attention to the 25,000 American children a year who leave our foster care system w/ no one and no home; you need to spend more time thinking about the children who are left in the rear view mirror of the messianic zeal of your cohorts. This doesn’t have to be a zero sum game but you are making sure it is w/ your ill informed name calling and poorly thought out advocacy campaign.

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     • PS. We’re not the ones making money on adoption – that would be the scores of adoption agencies pushing CHIFF. We are not anti-adoption – many of our folks are adoptive parents. But this bill is not the answer. Adoptions are down because abuses are up. It’s incumbent upon the industry to clean up bad practice and respond to concerns of foreign governments. Indeed, by failing to develop a single national strategy that incorporates the interests of children EVERYWHERE your team has ensured that a substantial number of children in this country will be overlooked. It’s not an “either/or” it’s a “both/and.”

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   • Your response to CHIFF is rather “interesting.” Have you wondered why no genuine adoption reform and adoptee rights organization in the US supports CHIFF? Or, conversely, why PEAR opposes? CHIFF propagandists have repeatedly attacked adopted people–including transracial and transnational adoptees– who oppose CHIFF, calling them anti-Semitic, anti-gay, and racist. But most important, if you look at the list of CHIFF proponents you find high roller adoption agencies who have made millions of dollars off the misery of others and their companion high roller ministries blatantly promoting neo-colonialism and humanitarian imperialism. Soft US foreign policy has been turned over to NGOs with Americanist and globalist agendas identical to CHIFF.

     Elizabeth Bartholet has stated publicly (I heard her at a NCFA conference) make the absurd statement that individuals and countries enpower themselves when the send their children off to be adopted. That’s not the “movement” I want to be associated with. The destruction of families and culture is not a value I want to be associated with.White elites do not have dibs on the world’s children.

     Cross-country adoption to the US has been stopped by many countries due to US adoption agency corruption and abuse. US adoptoin needs cleaned up before it can go anywhere.

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   • I’ll add that those of us fighting CHIFF, as Mo pointed out, don’t make money off of adoption. Hey, I lose money every day fighting this bill and all the other crackpot bills that come out of people who think adopted people should just shut up and be happy they weren’t aborted or dumped.

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2. Eleanor, I agree. It boggles the mind that anti-adoption folks just blindly attack without regard for the millions of unparented children languishing in orphanages, on the streets, or being trafficked for sex or forced labor.

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   • Katy, how are adoptees anti-adoption. We are adoption. How are adoptees of color racists?

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   • When one looks up the word “disingenuous” in the dictionary, Katie, there’s a picture of you. You have done nothing but promote yourself and your cabal of ill informed, short sighted, politically inept minions since the day this bill was introduced. Now, absent any real political support or authentic coalition building you and your folks have resorted to outright lies and expanded the distortions that have been your stock in trade. This bill is bad public policy. It will not help kids. Adoptions are down because abuses are up. The beginning of promoting adoption is cleaning up the business of adoption. And as our colleague Jeff Katz recently pointed out, it wouldn’t hurt to take a step back and look at the big picture to ensure that no child is left behind wherever they live including the tens of thousands of kids in our own back yards. One thing if for sure. The more you default to this kind of drivel the farther you will be from your ostensible goal. Finally, as an attorney you are on very thin ice ethically w/ your ongoing ad hominem attacks, attacks that are deliberately intended to hold people who disagree w/ you – but who, it should be noted, are not wrong – in a false light.

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   • “Millions of un-parented children” is not only desperate hyperbole, it’s biologically impossible. I was taught (by my adoptive parents) to clean my side of the street before I worry about anyone else’s. I think that’s some kind of Christian dogma or something, but it seems like a rational way of being a good neighbor in a world with a dearth of good neighbors.

     Your dismissive tone in calling us “anti-adoption” is ludicrous for a number of reasons, the least of which is the fact that we are likely the only voice in this discussion with a real vested interest in protecting their integrity, rather than attempting to capitalize on it.

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3. Apparently Ms Payette has swallowed the kool-aid hook, line, and stinker. CHIFF presents no benefit to any child here in the states, nor abroad. CHIFF does grease the squeaky wheels of the international adoption industry juggernaut, which so far has managed to implode countless families and children for the sake of a good number of American religious interests.

   The 11th reason CHIFF needs to be stopped- Adoption, especially international adoption, is war. Despite whatever pseudo-religious justifications the sponsors of this bill might proclaim, descending upon another country and taking their children should be considered an aggressive act, and considering the status of adoption in the USA, that means relegating those children to a compromised, second-class citizenry in the *best* possible circumstance. Never mind that those children are forever denied their own cultural integrity, never mind the percentages that are re-homed or simply cast out on the streets, this is not the concern of the CHIFF. Their concern is simply ‘getting more product’ into the mill, damn the consequences.

   I don’t doubt that Ms Payette looks into the eyes of her precious little girl every day, but I do question how well she will accept and hear her when she reaches the age where she wants to know who she is and why she is here. I have friends who have adopted children from overseas and the results seem to be very black and white, these kids are either over-achievers or they’re out on the streets, there seems to be very little middle ground in all 6 that I know personally; so far only 3 of the 6 still live at their “forever homes.” Tragic odds for a system that bears no responsibility for any of it. Stop CHIFF now!

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   • Mark, I had never thought of war analogy. It certainly fall under the definition of an act of aggression. I’m sure if Congolese came over here and started taking little Americans “back home” there were be some major issues. And what of all those American babies who were sent overseas? Nobody wanted to adopt them here?

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4. Absolutely fits – to adopt something is to take it as your own, whether it is appropriate or not, whether it is offered or not, it is adopted. I can easily think of a plethora of ways we can help families in strife, hell even countries and regions going through tragedy and upheaval that don’t involve ownership. Adoption isn’t about helping, it’s about ownership, especially here in the US. We do war really well, it’s our #1 export, this is just part of the real agenda behind the CHIFF, and all done in the name of God no doubt, for those 1.2 mythical “orphans” overseas.. to hell with the 100,000 kids in foster care right now who could probably use a friendly voice and a safe place to live with no strings attached. Sickening, really.

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5. It might be good to see the diplomatic DRCongo debacle in this context. The efforts of Landrieu and BEB and CHIFF were indeed seen by the DCR as neo colonial actions and they stepped away from the formal discussion of the matter. As expected by State (and many of us) this action made the situation for American parents of Congolese kids worse, not better. This lack of empathy for those on the other side, is exemplary and telling. If you look in the eyes of the other, you at least try to see something else than your own reflection.

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6. It might be opportune to discuss this metaphore also in the context of the current DRCongo troubles. Landrieu, BEB and CHIFF undiplomatically and aggressively addressed the matter of the exit visa for adopted children directly – outside regular State channels – in a petition to the President of the DRC. A visit of a Congolese delegation was postponed / cancelled and the rules which stood in the way of the ‘release’ of the kids, were not loosened but tightened. State had warned openly for this counter effecitive approach, but the CHIFFERS just did it. DRCongo, a country that suffered immensely under cruel Christian colonialism, is obviously not open to any western aggression or dictate. The lack of historical knowledge and the lack of empathy that characterizes this Landrieu action is exemplary for CHIFF. If Eleonor Payette’s child is from Africa it will when she is an adult look back in the eyes of her mother with a deep anger about her mom’s profound misunderstanding of the adoption experience of the adoptee and her first family.

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   • The lack of historical context with CHIFF and adoption policy and practice in general is appalling. While we here stateside who actually live adoption and its ppolitical and social consequences, we need to point out, too, as you have, that CHIFFsters seem to have ignored the opinions of the countries they intend to raid. turn into client states.And intersectionalty? Forget it! CHIFFsters need to learn that adoption is not about them.

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7. “I’m sure if Congolese came over here and started taking little Americans “back home” there were be some major issues.”

   I love this so much. Can you imagine? “Do-gooders” from DRC organizing and enacting CONGOLESE LAWS that will allow them to more easily and aggressively raid THE UNITED STATES for its children?

   “We have to save those poor little white children from these psycho bible-thumpers! They beat them! They starve them! They make them sit indoors in front of flickering screens all day every day! They feed them practically nothing but sugar and chemicals! They force them to accept a hateful and false blue-eyed Jesus-god who send them to hell if they refuse to capitulate! We must rescue them!”

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8. I appreciate the passion that you show towards domestic adoption. Obviously, the children in the domestic system deserve love and homes of their own. Can you please point me towards the legislation that you support that is currently working to reform that system as well? As an adoptive father – I would like to help all children – regardless of nationality.

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9. O Nick, happy you want to help all the children all over the world. You must be a good man. But just stay on topic and discuss international adoption.

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   • Hi frank,

     Reasons 4,5 & 6 are about focusing on fixing domestic adoption. A number of comments highlight the horrible challenges with kids in the domestic system. I think those are all very important points. I am happy to support reforms or legislation that you can point me to. I don’t just want to be against something, but rather try to help improve things

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