KITTIES SPEAK OUT ABOUT ADOPTION

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.)

Up until today, although missing a piece of their lives they were content with their lot. Being "chosen" they were "special." A princess and prince. Now that they know they are on the same level as human adoptees they are hissy-pissed, locked and loaded.

THANKSGIVING: I'M GRATEFUL FOR CELEBRITY ADOPTERS!

I hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving. Since Bastardette regards cooking something people are paid to do, BF Bastard and I did China Dynasty this year. Big Chinese buffet along with turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, dressing, and some knockout maple syrup mashed sweet potatoes. I considered taking pictures of my meal to post here, but that's just so....Facebook!

Since everyone is saying how grateful they are this season, I suppose I should add my two cents: I am not grateful for the legislatures of 44 states and their industry bullies and hangers-on that continue to treat bastards as chattel. I'm grateful, however, for my Bastardette buddies, Bastard Nation, good friends, family, and the Bad Cats.

But most of all, I'm grateful for celebrity adopters, the true heroes of National Adoption Awareness Month. Without them, adoption would be as popular as the wringer washer, the buggy whip, and beta videos. Their altruistic acts of child gathering are an inspiration to middle America. Adoption = upward mobility. There's a little bit of Hollywood in each of us, and what better way to live like a star than to adopt.

Jim Hamilton posted this on nu.adult.adoption on Facebook and it's worth re-posting here as NAAM wears down: a photo album of 110 Celebrity Adopters. As Jim wrote: bring on the towel!

Personally, I think it takes a lot of chutzpah to include a picture of Joan Crawford and her abusee Christina. And I'm disappointed that the album doesn't include Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young (who pretended to adopt), Andy Devine, Wallace Berry (!) Dick Powell and June Allyson (1 Tann acquisition), Ruby Keeler and Al Jolson, Jack Benny and Mary Livingston, Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray and June Haver.

Whereis Zazu Pitts? She and her husband Tom Gallery adopted Marvin Carville LaMarr, son of Zazu's close friend silent screen actress Barbara LaMarr ("the girl to beautiful to live") after LaMarr died in 1926 of TB and nephritis aided by mean smack and coke habit. Gallery grew up to be a prominent LA-based boxing promoter, actor, and TV sports executive. A couple years ago he told the LA Times that he's writing a book about his mother.

Inexplicably, Jane Russell is off the A List. Russell (dated BF Bastard's uncle before Howard Hughes snatched her away) and husband football star Bob Waterfield, adopted three children. For decades she was an active adoption promoter, especially international adoption. She founded WAIF (World Adoption International Fund --no webpage) that is reported responsible for the adoption of 51,000 babies.

If I were to be adopted by a celebrity, I'd choose Jamie Lee Curtis and Art Buchwald, though not as a couple. Christoper Guest might object and Buchwald is dead. If given a choice between Madonna and Rosie O'Donnell, I'd take Madonna. She's got a good art collection and great underwear.

"SAFE HAVEN" SURVIVOR

In Columbus this summer a Grove City-area woman "surrendered" her newborn (and on Bastardette) into the Ohio "safe haven" program. Later, she and her mother talked to Columbus Dispatch reporter Rita Price about what had happened According to them, the 20-year old mother agreed to the "safe haven" under the influence of delivery-room medication. She received no counseling and was under the impression that "safe haven was a "Christian adoption program" not an anonymous baby mill. Naturally, officials at Doctors Hospital have refused comment. Last we heard, the mother had gone to court to retrieve her baby. (I am working on a longer piece on this case and ODJFS shenanigans for here and broader publication).

This woman is one of the very few "safe haven" mothers who have been granted a public voice, be it ever so small. Now, we have another voice: Melissa from Michigan.

Melissa sent her story to blogger Baby Love Child, in response to an earlier entry on "safe haven" mislabeling." While her comments remain on that entry, BLC has also posted them together with a short commentary in a separate entry A Critical Perspective on Baby Safe Haven Baby Dump Programs. Melissa tells us that in 2001 as a panicked teen who had just give birth secretly, she "safe havened" her son in a Westland Michigan hospital with the "help" of an adoption agency. She writes in part:

I never had any intentions on throwing my baby in a trash can nor did I want to abandon my baby under such a law but was in shock from delivering a butt breach baby and was terriffied because I hid my pregnancy. The adoption agency I dealt with was evil and self serving and repeatedly tried to talk me out of filing for custody telling how I would regret my child and it would ruin my life which none of that is true my son is the best part of my life hes an amazing little boy. Something needs to be done about these laws its being a abused by all people involved and it disgusts me this law was put into effect to keep young women from throwing newborns in trash cans not to circumvent adoption laws among other things its been used for...

To rescind the "safe haven" Melissa and her family were forced into a 5 week legal battle full of dirty adoption agency tricks. Basically, they were able to "buy" back her child from the state and the agency for about $20,000 in legal expenses. The kicker: the agency turned around then and tried to sue Melissa for ITS legal fees. Melissa does not name the agency, but I can think of a couple of prime suspects up there.

This is an important story and I hope you all read it. It sounds way too familiar.

Thank you Melissa for telling the truth about state baby dumping!

FIND MY FAMILY: WHERE'S THE RECORDS?

Did any of you watch Find My Family last night? It's the talk of the AdoptaSphere. "Unfortunately," I didn't. The CRAZY HOUSEGUEST commandeered my TV to download off his Play Station (or whatever he does) a lecture by some crackpot talking about lizard people who colonized earth a million years ago, circle the earth eternally to"protect" their half-blood progeny (us), and promise to unplug the Federal Reserve if things get too dicey. They also oppose the European Union and Barrack Obama. (I am NOT kidding)

It's always folly to talk about a TV show you haven't seen, but since this is my blog I'll do it anyway. So far, the reaction in AdoptionLaLaLand to Find My Family, except for Lorraine Dusky who liked it, has been a lot of "triggering" and weeping over reunion, even if adoptaviewers claim they hate the show. Beat me. It feels so good.

I figure Find My Family must be pretty bourgeois since do-gooders aren't complaining as they did over Who's Your Daddy, which, with its big boobed adoptee/soft porn actress on the make, truly was fun. (NOTE to the National Council for Adoption and The Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute: Nobody cares what you think. Who's Your Daddy did not destroy adoption as you moaned. Adoption is doing a quite nice job of destroying itself without TV's help.)

I've read a couple of open boards on the program. (ABC is probably the most civil) There's the usual spate of ungrateful-you-could-have-been-aborted lectures and, don't-worry-be-happy chripers on the other side. Adopters complain that their leg of the "triad" (there we go again with that naughty word!) was kicked out from under them in the reunion, aka after all we did for you. Well....Will Robinson... for once something about adoption is about the two who got the shit end of the stick...not you. (The reviewer on that site, btw, really really hates the show, but not for the reasons we could hate it for.)

Naturally, the elephant...er gorilla... in the room is sealed records. The ever witty, astute, and acid-fingered Ron Morgan (right at Studio City "Honk if you're my Daddy" action) posted on FauxClaud D'Arcy's FB page:

It's the 800 lb gorilla in the green room...shows like this thrive on mystifying the process of identity theft and positioning sentimentality in it's place. "somehow this person NEVER KNEW their family of origin but tonight they will be REUNITED! And now a word from Preparation H...."

Of course, reunion shows wouldn't be so titillating to the lego public if bastards could just walk down to their local vital stats or courthouse and pick up their birth certificates at leisure like everybody else.

Another thing bothers me. Who's doing the searches? Reportedly no one was acknowledged on the show. TV searches are outsourced to professionals. I know someone who did one. Since Troy Dunn's got his own gig now, who's there to pick up the slack? Rumor has it: search angels. Now, I am aware of some excellent search angels, but they are few and far between. Do we need to go there? And why would anyone work for ABC for free?

I've always thought that reunion shows were soft propaganda (and I admit it...my guilty pleasure, like Lawrence Welk.) Everyone is so benign and teary and happy, unlike the way the government portrays us. Nobody bitchslaps her mother. Even the doofiest adoptee gets big hugs from his mom and sisters. The occasional aw-shucks dad is as dangerous as Ozzie Nelson. It all seems natural and harmless to KNOW WHERE YOU CAME FROM, even if the government tags you a Bader Meinhoff lamster or Charlie Manson is your dad. For legos it's genealogy. For bastards it's homewrecking.

There's no movement to ban reunion shows from TV. The shows feel good. They're warm-hearted, especially during the there's no-place-like-home-for-the-holidays platitudinal season. Too bad, then, that all of those Barcoloungers who find reunion shows so heart-warming, homey, and lovely-dovey, like a warm cup of hot buttered rum, don’t put their money or their body where their mouth is and demand that lawmakers unseal obcs in their own states.

Unfortunately, we live a country where the simulacrum that plays on the screen is "real," bereft of archaic laws, high muckety-murky legislators, and snake-oiled adoption industrialists and their special interest self-perpetuating smirkers and thugs on both side of the aisle. So why mess up an entertaining reality show with reality? And politics? Let the monkeys dance!

Will Find My Family, as some hope, become a forum to expose the sealed records system? It's highly doubtful. Find My Family, full of melo and tears, won't shit in its own box.

November 25,2009 1-:55 AM, Addenda: Triona Guidry (adoptee73) has a good blog today on the show: Adoption, search, reunion, Is reality TV good for our rights, or adotion exploitation? She writes:

What we need are some shows that follow the demonstrations for our rights, the late nights writing letters to legislators and the media, the indignity of trying to say your piece while those same legislators are walking out on your testimony.

I cannot remember any national show covering adoptee civil rights since MSNBC's April 2, 1997 The Site: Parent Search segment with Soledad O'Brien. Producers worked closely with Bastard Nation, we were heavily featured. The end product was very good. The link is no longer available from the network. 12 yeas and nothing else?

JOAN WHEELER IS A BAAAAD GIRL!

Monday's CBS News published a lengthy article, Adoptees face sting of discrimination. Joan and her crappy adoption story were featured.

This entry isn't about Joan's story however. You can go to her Forbidden Family webpage and blog and read about it (and her forthcoming book) yourself.

This entry is about the reaction to the story: the usual shut-up and be grateful comments. It was bad enough that Joan is sufficently ungrateful for being adopted and lied to in the most egregious ways, but when she voiced her unhappiness with the CBS article itself and offered up corrections, she went from being just plain ungrateful and whiney to being a heathenish example of what's wrong with Americans today. She wasn't called a Communist, though she clearly is!

I think my favorite responses are:

I was adopted forty years ago in CA. I always like to say that God chose my parents for me after I was born.....

Posted by:
napsan22 1:23 PM

Wendy - God does not make mistakes. He gave you to your birth mother who gave you to your parents. Just a thought.

Posted by:
tjsills 10:06 AM

I am very worried that once the openness of adoptions may come out, there will be an even bigger rise in abortions. People have abortions often to hide what they have done. Before abortions people were hidden away or ran away to give birth. Making everything "open" would set us back so far. There are plenty of "open" adoptions now. As far as those "way back", IF your birth parents are looking for you they will find YOU. Do NOT go looking for them and force your way in. There are too many ways to find each other and if you don't, then assume that it's because they don't want to be found. You truly don't know what you may have been saved from. Times have changed but we should force people chosing life to be put back in a closet or to make an even worse choice.

Posted by: kab4usa10:37 AM

I must say that once again I see one of America's problems: accountability. I did not succeed because I "was adopted." I didn't get the job because I "was adopted." I did not go to college because I "was adopted." Pick yourself up and move beyond. As a child that was adopted almost 41 years ago, I can say that I was lucky. Yes, I am white and was adopted by a white family. My older brother was not. Never once did I feel ashamed or unwanted. Never once was I discriminated against. Never once did I not feel apart of the family. If anything, I was special. This article is crazy and places people's issues and burdens on others instead looking towards the real source, oneself.
Posted by
marybethandtpurvis Nov-23

But this entry is also about other reactions.

One of the real fun things about blogging or having a webpage is going through your stats to see who or what is reading you. Why is someone in Albania reading about sealed birth certificates in Illinois? Why does somebody in Peru care about what I have to say about Madonna? Who could be looking for what with the keywords "Utah, Grand Funk Railroad, firemen, douchebag?" And, it's always fun to check out the people and organizations I've pissed off. European Adoption Consultants, for instance, went through a spell of checking in on me about every 90 minutes. For awhile I had a regular visitor from Haliburton. Apparently after the CBS article hit, Joan's stats hit the roof propelled by some pretty impressive ISPs.

Joan sent me and other activists the following email and has given me permission to repost it here. She adds that after further investigation it is the US House not the White House that's checking her out.

Dear Friends in Adoption Reform,

Thanks to the negative/postive publicity of the ABC news article

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/adoptees-cite-discrimination-landmark-study-push-open-birth/story?id=9138141

my website is booming from readership in Washington, DC!

http://forbiddenfamily.com.

The Pentagon is reading my website! Ohhh! I am such a threat!!! Various IPs from around Washington have been reading my website for weeks, while my dysfunctional sisters still are causing me trouble to the point I must go to the police to stop their interference.

The White House also looked in on my website.

Yippey!!!

Will Somebody finally start paying attention to the real issues??

Oh, Maybe I'll be arrested. Good.

Go make some comments on my website. Make some comments on your own websites.

Discrimination against adoptees and our natural parents in the form of government seizure of our birth birth certificates and fraudulent new ones must end! We must win the civil rights to the truth of our births!

Sorry to be making blanket emails, and for not re-joining some memberships. Money is tight, but I will be back to BN and AAC and others soon. I have even let go my activism on Change dot gov. Dying parents and getting my book out are time consuming.

Love to all of you!!!

Joan

Joan also asked me to let you know:

Please make a note in your blog that I just got a call from the hospital. My adoptive mother is having a four hour blood transfusion right now --- 9pm.

We wish Joan well, and congratulate her for stirring up the trogs.

Hit Joan's website! Hit the CBS site. Hit your blogs. Bastards never shut up!

MARLEY MISSING FROM SHELTER

I haven't said anything about this before, but now that it's hit the press, I thought it best if you heard about it from me personally. I was put up for adoption.

A few days ago I was "surrendered" to the Citizens for Humane Action shelter in Columbus: Marley Missing from Citizens for Humane Action Center... but don't worry, I was stolen back. And during adoption hours no less. It was quite an experience, and not over yet. Yesterday we were in Obetz, but I think we're headed for St. Paul.

It's tough blogging on the lam , especially since my parents won't tell me why they took me to CHA in the first place. I know a lot of people call me a dog and a bitch, but I didn't think my own family would disown me. I mean what have I done to deserve this? Personally, I think it has something to do with National Adoption Awareness Month. Mom and dad were touched by the sad stories of desperate lonely couples they read about in the paper. I believe in a moment of utter but misjudged compassion, gave me up to make someone else happy. Surrender in haste. Regret at leisure.

THE AAC AND ADOPTEE RIGHTS: A REPLY TO THE EXAMINER

The Examiner has a 4-part interview with Eileen McQuade, president of the American Adoption Congress. Part 3 is dedicated to the AAC's policy on records access. Eileen talks out of both sides of her mouth:

Adoptees never agreed to the sealing of their birth certificates, and no one had the right to forbid them access to the key document that is available to all other citizens. The AAC does not believe that birth parents have the right to veto access to the birth certificate, because they relinquished all parental rights, including the right to control the birth certificate access. The appropriate balance is the one enacted in Oregon, New Hampshire, and Maine - the birthparent can file a contact preference form, to indicate a willingness for contact.

and

The AAC believes that the decision to compromise must be made at the state level, depending on the assessment of local advocacy groups.

I've been meaning to write a response to a statement along the same lines that Eileen made in the last issue of the AAC newsletter, The Decree. I still intend to, but this Examiner statement needs to be answered now.

I sent off a response to the Examiner, but (I think) due to space limitations only the first four paragraphs appear. Here is my comment in full with some re-writing and a one-paragraph addition towards the end.

MY REPLY

Unfortunately, Ms. McQuade' statements contradict each other.

While the AAC in theory "does not believe that birth parents have the right to veto access to the birth certificate” in practice it supports and promotes legislation, inside and outside its organization, that includes restrictions on access such as disclosure vetoes (DV) white-outs, and prospective measures that leave large groups of people behind.

The AAC opposed Bastard Nation's successful ballot initiative in Oregon saying we would turn the clock back 20 years. Yet in the 20 years they had been in operation at that time, they and their friends had not gotten passed one single unrestricted access bill, though they’d gotten discriminatory restricted bills in place which continue to muck up the civil rights for the adopted in those states making our job much more difficult.

Not one state--ever-- has fixed any compromised law. Once the state has made a DV agreement with a parent, it cannot unilaterally change the law and lift the DV. Even if a DV-state passes a bill retroactively opening all records, DVs on file would remain valid, leaving a blacklist of adoptees that cannot get their obcs unless their individual DV is rescinded—even by court order.

The ACC, no matter what its stated political view may be, is at heart reunionist. Its records agenda is based in desire, not rights. Bastard Nation certainly does not oppose search/reunion, but that’s not the issue. The issue is rights.

All arguments for obc access must flow from the presumed right of all adults to unrestricted access and possession of their original birth certificates, not just a majority class. Otherwise the right to one's birth certificate is not a right but simply a favor the state grants to some, a proposition which we doubt courts want to consider. The real issue, then, moves beyond “reunion” and the personal to the public and the political: who owns your identity: you or the state? What interest does the state have in keeping your birth certificates sealed? What is adoptees’ relationship to the state?

These are questions the AAC and other reunion-based groups neither address nor seem to take seriously.

Bastard Nation has drawn the winnable blueprint for change. Before BN developed its successful no-compromise strategies, only two states in the country allowed obc access to adoptees, Kansas and Alaska, both of which had never sealed records. Unrestricted access is now the law in four new states. Oregon and Alabama were direct BN projects. In New Hampshire we worked with a loose coalition of organizations and individuals, including AAC members. (right) Our own Janet Allen, a member of the NH House, worked tirelessly for passage with sponsor Sen. Lou D'Allesandro. We were not involved in Maine, but the folks there clearly followed BN's no-compromise principles. Without BN's clear vision, courage and core beliefs, none of those states would be open today.

Reformists can't be as dumb as the box of rocks they pretend to be. Yet, compromise on access, despite all proof to the contrary, remains their strategy of choice and ease. Reformists continue to take the same old tired path of self-defeatism for reasons that I can't even begin to comprehend. (NOTE: In 1999 Bastard Nation staged a protest at the old NCFA office in Washington, DC. In the Belly of the Beast was held during the AAC annual conference in a nearby Virginia suburb. When a couple of AAC board members exhibited an interest in attending the protest, AAC president Jane Nast not only forbade their attendance but called a mandatory board meeting for the same day and time to guarantee obedience to her and their absence from our ranks.)

The AAC has done some excellent work in other areas of adoption reform, but imo, they are the chief impediment to the restoration of our rights. Our natural opposition operates in a predictable manner: NCFA, ACLU, Planned Parenthood, “right to life” organizations, the Catholic Bishops. No matter what is proposed--clean or compromised--they don't budge their opposition. Reformists, however, go to great lengths to explain how they "believe" in clean bills. At the slightest sign of opposition they then inexplicably cast their principles before swine, hoping if they toss enough to them, they might get something. This waffling reeks of indecision, insecurity, and amateurism. Moreoever, the AAC by leaving the decision to compromise up to local groups indicates a lack of leadership and exhibits ideological weakness. Wag the dog. Wishy-washyness does not command the respect of NCFA et al and certainly not Bastard Nation. Why should it? They compromise clean bills. They promote discriminatory bills. They seldom pull a bill gone bad. Anything is better than nothing. “Baby steps” is better than nothing. The thing is, we aren’t babies.