Take Yourself Out of the Discourse! My response to Jean Strauss' HuffPo blog

November NaBloPoMo is coming to the end, and boy am I glad! I had planned to write some dynamite posts this month, but the task of writing every day (it takes 8-12 hours for me to write one blog usually) just wore me out and my life, such as it is, was put on hold. At the moment my house is a pigsty and both ears are plugged shut with a sinus infection that's out of control. I am sick of National Adoption Awareness Month and it's MSM cotton candy puff pieces, fat cat celebrations, and deformers selling our rights up the creek. I don't remember when I've been so sick of adoption as I am tonight.

So, I planned originally to write a short Goodbye NAAM blog, until Jean Strauss's Absurd Dilemmas Caused by Secrets in Closed Adoptions showed up in Huffington Post this afternoon. (Please someone, tell me how does one become a HuffPo blogger!) Here's my rush job.

Benedict Bastard Strauss, who rode into California on her white horse and skeeved out on her ass,( here and California Adoption Reform sidebar) frames her HuffPo essay around the fallacious claim that original birth certificate access is about getting medical histories for adoptees. She rattles on about "birthmother" privacy, too. Neither of which has anything to do with the civil and human right of every person to receive their government produced birth certificate without state or third person restriction. Strauss conflates sealed records with closed adoption. Taking a cue from Sara Feigenholtz, she cooks the books claiming that 10 states, not 6, acknowledge the right of its bastards to their own original birth certificates. The first paragraph alone should disqualify Strauss from the debate

How angry would you be if the government had personal information about you -- but wouldn't let you see it? Many adult adoptees can relate to this experience -- forty states still withhold their original birth certificates from them. The secrets inherent in closed adoptions can create a lifetime of frustration and feelings of being second-class citizens -- and can also create absurd dilemmas.

For most of the next 10 paragraphs Strauss continues to conflate issues and confuse the reader as she pimps the current New Jersey A1406/S799, the latest bill in the 30 year attempt to get something passed over the heads of Catholic Bishops and liberal do-gooders. Worst amongst Strauss' sins is her confusion and misrepresentation of the disclosure veto, the contact veto, and in the case of New Jersey, the misnamed and misrepresented contact preference form (cpf). Who wrote this bill?

I'm surprised that such a proficient writer as Jean Strauss is so fuzzy on this. But, maybe she doesn't want to be clear, since she and her New Jersey cohorts are so desperate to get A1406/S799 passed and signed by Gov. Christie this session that they don't care how they fuzz the facts, creatively interpret the bill, and sell their integrity and the birthright Class Bastard for their a deformist 15 minutes.

Strauss writes:

Oregon, New Hampshire and Maine (she left out Alabama; Kansas and Alaska have no such provisions) allow birthparents to file 'no consent' forms where they can stipulate their desires regarding contact. The number of birthparents who file such documents is infinitesimal. For example, in New Hampshire, where adoptees have had access since 2005, with over 24,000 sealed records on file only 12 birthparents have requested 'no contact'.

Now, let me correct Strauss:

There is no such thing as a "no consent" (to what?) form in any free state that gives adoptees unrestricted access to their records without forcing them to play Mother May I and Ring Around the Bureaucrat. BTW, what are those other four states noted in the intro?

And explain to her that a preference is not a veto!

The contact preference form permits a first parent to express his or her wishes concerning contact and does not place a condition on access or criminalize an adoptee unfairly; that is, no matter what the preference the adoptee will receive the obc. The cpf does not legally bind the adoptee to abide by the request of the person filing it.

The original cpf was carefully crafted and negotiated by Oregon M58 leader and Bastard National Helen Hill and an Oregon legislator to stop other lawmakers, unhappy with the passage of the ballot initiative that restored the right to obc access to all Oregon adoptees without restriction, from adding veto language into the clean law.

A disclosure veto allows birth parents to block the state from issuing original birth documents to their adult biological offspring. Disclosure vetoes appear to vest birth parents with a “right to privacy” or a “right to confidentiality” which in reality does not exist. Disclosure vetoes are based on the premise that adopted adults are perpetual children who must have their birth parents’ tacit permission to access their own birth certificates.

A contact veto provision in a records access law allows birth parents to file an affidavit with the government stating that they do not want to have any contact with their relinquished adult biological children. Violation of a contact veto may subject an adopted adult to criminal penalties.

A contact veto is a restraining order imposed by one citizen upon another with no cause shown, and without benefit of due process. It is issued entirely on the basis of the adoptive status of an individual and is without recourse.

A white-out (which Strauss does not mention) acts in the case of the New Jersey bill, as a disclosure veto in that a "birthparent" can authorize the state to release the birth certificate, but with all identifying information removed.

Here is how "open records" plays out in New Jersey via A1406/S799. The bill:

*includes a 12- month open enrollment period, starting after the Department of Health and Senior Services releases regs for SCS799/1399 implementation, that allows "birthparents," to file disclosure vetoes--wrongly called a "contact preference form"--before obcs, past and future, are unsealed.

*authorizes the State Registrar to replace the original birth certificate of those subjected to the contact veto/disclosure veto with a mutilated copy of the obc with all identifying information, including the address of the parent(s) at the time of birth (if they appear on the cert) deleted.

*requires "birthparents" who file a contact veto/disclosure veto to submit an intrusive and probably illegal medical and family history form to activate the veto.

*requires "birthparents" who file a contact veto/disclosure veto to fill out the same intrusive and probably illegal medical and family history form.

So not only can obcs be mutilated or withheld by the state, but the state can by law blackmail women who want to "remain anonymous "into turning over medical histories to its functionaries. Nobody has a right to someone else's medical history. Some critics believe this provision may violate HIPAA.

Moreover, the bill seals by default all "safe haven" birth certificates, even though many "safe haven" babies are boarder babies, born to identified mothers and abandoned in hospitals shortly after birth. Some of these children may never be adopted and will never have a genuine birth certificate.

Clearly A1406/S799 turns the clean laws of the six free states and the bastards that made them happen, on their heads while permitting business as usual in New Jersey, even if for a limited time. Pretending that A1406/S799 is a "good" bill, Strauss fails to address any of the restrictive provisions except for the off-handed comment, which in turn nullifies her "open records" argument:

There certainly are birthparents who want and need privacy -- and the New Jersey bill allows them to have their names removed from the birth certificate.

I find this particularly egregious since Strauss, in discussing the dire need for medical histories, uses Gay Ellen Brown, an Illinois adoptee living in New Jersey who in 2009 was diagnosed with pre-cancerous breast lesions, as an example of someone who needs a medical history. Illinois has repeatedly denied Ms. Brown access to her obc, and she has been denied further testing and possible treatment by her insurance company because she can't prove a family history of the disease. We can all agree this is awful and should never happen. Unfortunately, while Strauss fronts off Ms. Brown as a victim of the sealed records system, she has no problem with letting New Jersey adoptees in similar situations, remain victimized.

It's OK, I guess, to leave some people behind.

Oddly, not once does Strauss argue that adopted persons have an intrinsic RIGHT to their own obcs and to be treated legally equal to the not-adopted. Strauss panders to opposition (National Council for Adoption, Catholic Bishops, NJ Right to Life, NJ-ACLU) arguments of state- guaranteed "birthparent" privacy, claims that have been debunked by adoptee activists including Strauss herself, for years.

This is Class Bastard's rights we're talking about here. No state should be legislating to protect somebody's comfort zone. Yet deformers continue to defend the spurious "rights" of others while the rest of us are expected to take what we can get.

Class Bastard has already shown what can be done. We've won in four states, while deformers continue to drag out their politically debilitating half-measures in places like New Jersey, where it's been going on for 30 years. As I've written before: All arguments for access must flow from the presumed right of all adults to unrestricted access and possession of their true birth certificates, not just a majority class. Otherwise, the right of anyone to possess their own birth certificate is not a right but a favor the state grants to some.

If Jean Strauss and the folks in New Jersey (some of whom I know and respect) are afraid to ask and to fight for what they really want, then they should remove themselves from the discourse before they cause any more harm. This isn't just about New Jerey It's about all the closed states and the millions of adoptees whose records and rights are filed away in vaults.

National Council for Adoption Gala Pics

I don't know if this will work for readers without a Facebook account, but the National Council for Adoption has published an animoto review of the November 18, 2010 30th anniversary, Black Tie & Pearls gala at the Willard on it's FB page.

I recognize Chuck Johnson, the NCFA staff, Michale Barone, Heidi Cox, Mary Landreiu and a couple other guests whose names escape me, but who are those beauty queens and why are they with NCFA?

I'm disappointed, but not surprised, that NCFA has suppressed certain activities that occured at the gala and that Bastardette and her crack team of undercover journos clandestinely taped and posted here.

Sara's Bastards: Feigenholtz Continues to Lie about her "law"

When Neal Young released his 1979 LP Rust Never Sleeps we doubt if he had Sara Feigenholtz in mind. Yet, that's the phrase that came to mind when I read Feigenholtz's latest interview with the press in Saturday's Springfield State Journal Register and other Gatehouse publications.

Corrosion. Corruption. Decay.

Listen to Sara:

I think that non-adopted people take the right to know the first chapter of their life for granted … To know where you came from is a basic human right.

Feigenholtz's HB 5428, which she claims restores the right of original birth certificate access to Illinois adoptees, guarantees no such right--unless she considers playing wack-a-mole and Mother May I with state functionaries and birthparents and filling out War and Peace-length government forms how the non-adopted exercise their actual right to access their own birth certificates,

Listen to Sara:

We have to stop stigmatizing adoption. Adoption is a beautiful thing. We have nothing to be ashamed of. This legislation turns the corner on the stigmatizing of adoption.

From an email sent by Feigenholtz or a member of her staff, to Washington State bastard activist Lori Jeske, after Jeske objected to HB 5429's failure to recognize obc access as a right for all adopted, not a government favor for some:

Thank you so much for your kind remarks about HB 5428.

We will pay for your travel and housing expenses if you will come here and start working on a new bill that completes the effort so that all adoptees get their obc.

Are you ready to move to Illinois and sacrifice your life to work for adoption reform for the next fifteen years in the frigid winter tundra of Illinois?

Would you consider giving Representative Feigenholtz the key to your (delusional) Eutopian world where all ungrateful bastards think it's easy to pass a bill that makes everyone happy AND CAN ACTUALLY PASS ? Pass a law? what a concept !!

Many Illinois born 65+ year old adoptees will get their birth certificates BEFORE THEY DIE--- very soon. We will tell them that you would prefer to throw good under the bus while waiting for perfect and that you think they should wait a little longer.

Good luck in Washington state with your efforts. We can hear the unsealing now.......

NOT.\\

The Ungrateful Bastard received no apology, even though the email was widely distributed.

Listen to Sara:

I am always a true believer in restoring rights to people, and I feel that the sealing of adoption records was a very barbaric thing to do.

Yet, this is exactly what Sara the Barbarian and her HB 5428 do: allows the state to seal records via disclosure vetoes.

Listen to Sara:

21 birth parents have exercised the option of anonymity, according to Feigenholtz, who doesn't anticipate a dramatic spike in that number.

Calling Private Ryan! Calling Private Ryan! 21 people whom she declares have a human right to their own obc don't thanks to her. Not even a condolence.

Listen to Sara:

Illinois is the 10th and largest state in the nation to enact such a law, according to Feigenholtz.

Only six states, Kansas, Alaska, Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Maine recognize the right, without restriction, of all their adoptees to their own birth records. Deformers such as Feigenholtz float Tennessese (as I wrote the other day) and Delaware as open states although obcs are sealed with disclosure vetoes. Tennessee also has a contact veto criminalizing bastards who contact first family members without parental permission. Feigenholtz, who can't tell the difference between an "open" and closed" records state, is hardly an expert witnesses--or pusher- for records access.

Listen to Sara:

She said she believes “all eyes are on Illinois” now to see how the legislation pans out. It is her hope that Illinois’ example will serve as a catalyst for other states to take similar action.

If the "eyes" of the country want to see how legislation pans out, they have only to look to the six states that are open, not to Illinois and its fake bill and incompetent sponsor.

Sara Feigenholtz and her underboss Melilsha Mitchell have never heard of the concept of Simplicity of Language. Oregon's ballot initiative read:

Upon receipt of a written application to the state registrar, any adopted person 21 years of age and older born in the state of Oregon shall be issued a certified copy of his/her unaltered, original and unamended certificate of birth in the custody of the state registrar, with procedures, filing fees, and waiting periods identical to those imposed upon non-adopted citizens of the State of Oregon pursuant to ORS 432.120 and 432.146.

Successful bills in other states are only a few pages long. The Feigenholtz/Mitchell 80 page bloviation isn't a bill to be read, much less be enacted.

Gone unmentioned in all of Sara's media parlez vousing is the fact that not one single adoptee rights or adoption reform organization in the US supported HB 5428. Feigenholtz, in fact, knew that the bill with all its dead ends, and smoke, and mirrors, would be so unpopular that she smuggled it through the House in a shell bill. With typical Chicago-style politics, the bill's intro and subsequent House hearings were backdated so that no one even knew the bill was up for a hearing, much less even existed, until the bill was on its way to the floor of a Sara-friendly House. (Go here for a discussion of the Committee/House calendar and the rigging of the bill).

Testimony in the Senate was limited to two opposition witnesses (one an anti-abort, not on the same page with bastard righters). It was all shut up and sit down. Although a number of bastards were present at the hearing to testify against the bill and other opposition testimony had been submitted in writing, the committee railroaded the bill out and on to the Senate floor over the silenced objections of the cranks, and fringes, and crackpots who have the funny idea that rights are for everyone, and not up for political grabs. (Go here for my detailed review of much of the Illinois fiasco.)

The sad part of this is that Feigenholtz had a real chance to pass a real bill that would have restored the right of all Illinois adoptees to their records. Instead she chose to take the easy way with a piece-a-crap bill that continues the bastardizaiton of bastards and lets her collect awards

For 15 years or more Sara Feigenholtz has crawled over the backs of bastards in the trenches who have spent their lives and treasure restoring our rights. Feigenholtz has used adoptee rights superficially to aggrandize herself and help build her so-called prog political career, while those in the movement have denounced her and her bills repeatedly. Outside of Melisha Mitchell, who makes money off of adoption secrecy, no one involved seriously in adoptee rights or adoption reform will go near her. The media is forced, then, to find outsider innocents unaware of the history of the fight for adoptee rights in Illinois, the bill's contentiousness, or Sara's mendacity to stand with her. (Look out liberal LGBT and feminist base!)

There is nothing progressive about Sarah Feigenholtz. Or even remotely liberal. She has no ideology but power. She's old-style Chicago politics. Feigenholtz has ignored, rejected, and betrayed adopted people in Illinois and throughout the country with her disregard for the people she claims she represents. She couldn't even be bothered to respond to emails she solicited for records access input a few years ago, except to hit up the writers for money when she ran for Rahm Emmanuel's' seat in Congress--and lost.

HB 5428 is a slap in the face of every bastard, every parent , every sister and brother and friend, every legislator who believes our rights are sacrosanct and not to be compromised. HB 5428 is especially a spit in the face of legislators who shepherded good bills through, and with heavy heart, killed bad bills out of respect and solildarity for the movement and their personal belief that no one should be left behind. Sara Feigenholtz is no Bastard Goddess.

Corrosion. Corruption. Decay

Rust never sleeps.

And neither do bastards. Sara, you are obsolete. Your rust, corrosion, corruption, and decay have eaten you.

Addenda: Go to Bastard Granny Annie for Don't Copy Illinois

Natural Mother Experience in Film: a Brief Review of D W Griffith and the Grammar of Film Adoption

I've run short of time today, so to keep up the pace I'm posing here part of my study of adoption in film. This is first part of my longerl Where We Came From that I presented at the ASAC conference in Tampa in 2005, though this part was not included in the final draft. It stands on it's own, though, there is much more to say about Griffith's "bastard/adoption" work.

******

Many adoption films are family melodramas, and from the earliest films, the wronged woman and her child - wronged by husbands and fathers, parents, reformers or social workers - have been the subject of film. The study of American adoption film starts with D. W. Griffith. Griffith’s artistic view was more than loosely Victorian with values drawn from the antebellum South, theatrical melodrama, and Populist agrarianism.

Griffith was a notorious melodramatist even when traditional melodrama was out of style; a non-Marxist advocate for the oppressed and powerless; an upholder of the bourgeois family as the ideal. He was against the forces of reform and the hypocritical “uplifters” whom he mercilessly attacked his films. The subject of many Griffith films is the interpersonal drama of the family within its social and historical setting—under attack from within or without—a form which continues in family melodrama and soaps today. His dramas were usually a structured attack on or a defense of the integrity and/or virtue of the woman and the social codes and prohibitions which enable her to maintain her place.

While the Cult of True Womanhood, with its Rousseau-like view of female piety, purity, domesticity and submissiveness, was still widely sanctioned in the US prior to World War I, Griffith’s early Biograph maternal melodramas were excessive for his era, and became more so as time went on. Between 1909 and 1920 Griffith directed at least 10 films that can be identified as bastard/adoption- related including A Baby’s Shoe (1909) Ramona (1910) and Female of the Species (1912), a Darwinian survival tale of three gun-toting women who find a lost infant while fighting their way across a dust-choked desert. This theme was later developed by John Ford and others in the maternal-male genre seen in films such as Three Godfathers and Three Men and a Baby, a genre still produced today.

One of Griffith’s early Biographs, The Rocky Road (1910) exemplifies his simple yet extreme moralizing, and in terms of today’s open records debate, it shows the melodramatic consequences that might befall those who are adopted and cannot access information about their origins. The plot involves Ben Cook, “a man of intelligent energy”, who, in the face of financial reverses, takes up liquor. Cook beats his wife and 3-year old daughter, runs away to another town to sober up and gets a job in a sawmill. Cook’s wife searches for him, and when her mind becomes unhinged, her daughter is adopted by another family. Years later, the daughter, played by 13-year old Blanche Sweet, unwittingly becomes engaged to marry her own father. When her mother learns of the impending wedding, she rushes to the church, and falls dead into the arms of her former husband.

While one can laugh at over-dramatized psychosexual plots such as The Rocky Road, Griffith’s serious bastard/maternal work can be found in his classic films, Intolerance (1916), Broken Blossoms (1919), and Way Down East (1920) These films explore the issues of poverty, child abuse, bastardy, and motherhood in and out of marriage - all within the framework of Progressive reform and often hypocritical judgment and “uplift.”

Decrying the encroachment of urbanization and industrial capitalism, Griffith’s work followed the tradition of social commentators like H.L. Menken who identified reformers as meddlesome, hypocritical busybodies (a thread that runs through many adoption films.) Numerous "uplift committees" and "purity leagues" fell before Griffith’s irony and satire. This is especially true in Mother and the Law, the contemporary arc of Intolerance where the uplifters were identified as the newest representatives of intolerance, perpetuating the very conditions they professed to ameliorate. (The removal of the baby by the unpleasant uplifters begins at 40:00 and lasts until the end). Griffith assigns the motive of the uplifters to a half-conscious envy of youth, vitality, freedom—and, viewed with a bastard eye—the "other woman"’s fertility. The pointedly unattractive old maid sister of mill owner Jackson is seen leading an increasingly ambitious and mean-spirited classist campaign against saloons, whorehouses and workers' dances. The intertitle describes their work: “When women cease to attract men, they often turn to Reform as a second choice.”

When The Boy (Bobby Harron) is framed by The Friendless One (Miriam Cooper) and sent to prison for murder, Miss Jackson and her friends march in prudish lockstep to the working class flat of his wife, The Dear One (Mae Marsh), declare her an “unfit mother” and literally wrestle her baby from her arms. They remove him to an orphan asylum, where is he watched over in the baby ward by nurses who dance the two step with each other accompanied by the intertitle: “Of course, hired mothers are never negligent.”

Another frighteningly self-righteous relinquishment scene is played for laughs 10 years later in the classic flapper film It (1927). In It, Betty Lou, (Clara Bow) pretends to be the mother of her unmarried roommate’s baby when two neighborhood Grundys attempt to take him to a “home.” Where Griffith suggested that Jackson’s sister needed a husband, Bow was more blunt: “If women like you would stay home and have babies of your own, we’d all be better off.”

While Intolerance examined contemporary urban life, Way Down East, an old fashioned horse and buggy melodrama, exuded a late-Victorian backwater mood of prejudice and small-mindedness that belied the cultural and sexual realties of America portrayed in Intolerance. Heroine Anna Moore (Lillian Gish) is caught in the nexus of two cultures: the high life of the city and the simplicity of the country. While the “city playboy” with his lure of material goods and marriage is the agent of Anna’s fall, she is guilty of nothing worse than naiveté and misplaced trust. The revelation that her marriage is illegal, coupled with the death of her newborn baby, forces Anna to flee to the restorative calm of the country. It is here where Anna runs afoul of Miss Jackson’s Country Cousin, more than happy to spread the word about Anna’s unwitting unwed motherhood. The malicious meddling of the neighbor and the prejudice of her new suitor’s father, drive Anna from Eden and into the arms of the most famous blizzard in film history, and to certain death on an ice floe (only to be saved in the nick of time by the love and courage of a good man.) Gish’s Anna marks the turning point in American melodrama: a rejected and solitary individual against the current. All-powerful destiny has been replaced by all-power society, a general theme that American melodrama and bastard films continue to follow.

BJ Lifton: New York Times Obit

Today's New York Times offered a featured obit on BJ Lifton who died last week of complications of Pneumonia: Betty Jean Lifton Dies at 84; urged open adoptions.

Although the obit conflated open adoption and open records, it's an otherwise good review of BJ's life. I had no idea she was 84. I'm bad a age. I thought early to mid 70s.

When “Twice Born” was first published, there were few books about the adoptee experience. Adoption in general was a veiled topic, and adoptees — assuming they were told anything — rarely knew their given names, their birth parents’ identities or the precise circumstances of their adoptions.

As a result, generations of adoptees grew up with a void where their personal histories should be and, Ms. Lifton argued, with deep feelings of confusion, grief and loss.

“When I was born, society prophesied that I would bring disgrace to my mother, kill her reputation, destroy her chances for a good bourgeois life,” she wrote in “Twice Born.”

She added: “I say that society, by sealing birth records, by cutting adoptees off from their biological past, by keeping secrets from them, has made them into a separate breed, unreal even to themselves.”

The book’s publication, which gave momentum to the emerging adoption-reform movement, prompted an outpouring of mail from people with similar stories. These letters, and subsequent interviews with adoptees, informed the next installments in Ms. Lifton’s trilogy, in which she examined the psychological toll that closed adoption can take, and the psychological affinities many adoptees appear to share.

According to discussion on BJ's Facebook page, a memorial service is being planned.

Picture of BJ, kitteh, and googies from NY Times.

Adopt Me: Adopt a Turkey

CNN reported At Thanksgiving, Some adopt a turkey rather than eating one.

Like in any proper adoption, volunteers must pass a screening process. Although it's not a requirement, a majority of them are vegetarians or vegans. The individuals must have an adequate facility to care for the bird, such as a barn or a sizable yard. The organization prefers adoptive "parents" who don't have other domestic animals or children who might chase turkeys.

The nonprofit will deliver the turkey to the adoptive homes.

In fact, it seems that adopting a turkey is more humane and professional than our current adoption process:

From the Adopt-a-Turkey Project we find more (my emphasis):

Since 1986, Farm Sanctuary has rescued more than 1,000 turkeys, placed hundreds into loving homes through our annual Turkey Express adoption event, educated millions of people about their plight, and provided resources for a cruelty-free holiday. For a one-time $30 donation, anyone can sponsor turkeys residing at Farm Sanctuary. Sponsor a turkey and receive a special adoption certificate in your name – or give sponsorships as gifts for family and friends. Donations are also needed to support our lifesaving efforts to promote a compassionate Thanksgiving and protect all farm animals.

Of course, if adoption agencies offered child sponsorship in place of anonymizig, they'd go out of business soon enough.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Mr. Bastard and I did Surly Girl with cupcakes

National Adoption Day: Stats and Shame

Last Friday. November 18 was National Adoption Day. Baby Love Child, in her blog for that day, National Adoption Day: A celebration of sealed records & inequality, wrote in part:

"National Adoption Day” must be recognized for what it is from the adoptees’ perspective rather than the adoption industry’s perspective; it represents the single largest number of sealed records of any day of the calendar year. A collective loss of thousands of kids original identities one stroke of a pen at a time.

I had never thought of NAD specifically working in those terms: the single largest number of sealed records of any day of the calendar year.

BLC pointed out that by the end of the week culminating with NAD, approximatley 4500 children would be adopted. Except for those adopted in the six free states, all of them will have their identities and histories obliterated by the state forever with the impounding and sealing of their birth cetificates. Unless, that is, we can fix it.

It kinda made me sick.

Making me sicker is the number of obcs that have been sealed alone on that "special" day since NAD's inception in 2000. According to the Tri-State Defender: more than 30,000.

That's about the same number of people who live in Alton, Illnois or Menlo Park, California or Jeanu, Alaska or Olveido, Florida.

If jackboot government agents marched into those towns and confiscated and sealed up the birth records of their citizens, they would be riots in the streets. (Or maybe not . USians seem to put up with any infringement of their liberties lately.) As long as it's childen, being saved from their own personal information and it's done for their own good, it's OK. That this gross injustice is being prepetuated by adoption agencies, public policy, national courthouse "celebrations,"pandered and pimped by the national media, and marketed by presidential decree and a big hoo-ha at the Superdome is a sign of how broken adoption is. This is not a time for celebration.

Blank Slate 2: More Texas Shenighans for National Adoption Awareness Month!

Sunday I reported that the Texas Attorney General's office claims that paps and adopters have no legal right to know the background of the children they intend to adopt. This isn't the end of of the story!

After WFAA broke the initial story of 'Phillip" and "Lisa's" fight with Texas authorities to get background information on the four children they were trying to adopt, the station says it received numerous emails "detailing similar problems."

Today, right in the middle of National Adoption Awareness Month, WFAA broadcast another case of Texas Department of Family and Protective Services shenanigans. This time it's the story of "Michelle" and "Dave" who seven months ago tried to adopt two brothers, 5 and 7, from the state system. Records sent by the Department indicated the boys had no history of abuse or disturbing or disruptive behavior outside of "tantrums." Soon after placement, however, the older boy began to rage for hours, punch himself in the face until his nose bled, and continually screamed that he would kill his new family. Knives and scissors were locked up.

The article fails to mention if the couple contacted DFPS. We assume they did, but it looks like they didn't get much help. "Michelle" and "Dave"ended up tracking down the boys' former therapists and foster parents on their own and learned that six months of therapy notes were missing from their case file, which they were able to recover eventually. The elder boy was considered an "aggressive and violent child" and had even assaulted a teacher.

For their effort to get the children's state-secret pasts and help for them, the adoption was summarily terminated without notice, and the couple was given no opportunity to even say goodbye to the boys:

One day after a meeting with caseworkers to discuss all they had learned, they say the boys were taken from them forever — the younger boy plucked from class.

"Michelle" and "Davie" have been told that the oldest was placed in a psychiatric facility temporarily and that both are now in foster care. Ready for re-adoption, I suppose. Wonder if the new parents will get the files.

The rest of the story is taken up with an interview with Heidi Bruegel Cox, identified as a member of the governor's Adoption Review Committee, expected to release a report next month on something (We assume there will be no recommendation to open all obcs.) WFFA neglected to mention that Cox is also Executive Vice President and General Counsel for The Gladney Center and secretary of the board of The National Council for Adoption.

She said the law is difficult to enforce with state caseworkers.

"When you're working with the state, it's very difficult or most times impossible to sue the state," Cox said.

This sounds like a round-about commercial for the private adoption industry, which Cox serves. You get what you pay for. If you want to adopt with assurance that you won't be suckered and treated like crap if you complain, go to trusted professionals, not the government. (hmmm).

But it is also a profoundly disturbing statement, which I believe is true. We've all heard countless stories of foster and adoption abuse from state systems. That WFAA has received numerous emails from other paps and adopters with similar stories to Phillip/Lisa's and Michelle/David's, suggests a serious pattern of (purposeful?) ineptness if not out-right fraud. Adoption is all about state secrets. There is no doubt that there are kids the state wants to dump. There are files and information the state wants to hide. How can six months of therapy notes go missing? How can social workers "forget" histories of abuse? And why is the Texas Attorney General "misinterpreting" state law in their blame the victim cover-up of DFPS?

According to the news report, despite the AG's ridiculous opinion to the contrary:

State law says Dave and Michelle should have been give the available records on the prospective adoptees.

Here is the Texas Family Code on the availability of background information to paps and adopters. Seriously, it took me about 10 seconds to find background mandates in the Texas Code, yet the Attorney General claims there's no legal right to the information. Since it is rather long, I'm just posting only the first part of the statute.

Sec. 162.005. PREPARATION OF HEALTH, SOCIAL, EDUCATIONAL, AND GENETIC HISTORY REPORT.

(a) This section does not apply to an adoption by the child's

(1) grandparent;

(2) aunt or uncle by birth, marriage, or prior adoption; or

(3) stepparent

(b) Before placing a child for adoption, the Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, a licensed child-placing agency, or the child's parent or guardian shall compile a report on the available health, social, educational, and genetic history of the child to be adopted.

(c) The report shall include a history of physical, sexual, or emotional abuse suffered by the child, if any.

(d) If the child has been placed for adoption by a person or entity other than the department, a licensed child-placing agency, or the child's parent or guardian, it is the duty of the person or entity who places the child for adoption to prepare the report.

(e) The person or entity who places the child for adoption shall provide the prospective adoptive parents a copy of the report as early as practicable before the first meeting of the adoptive parents with the child. The copy of the report shall be edited to protect the identity of birth parents and their families.

(f) The department, licensed child-placing agency, parent, guardian, person, or entity who prepares and files the original report is required to furnish supplemental medical, psychological, and psychiatric information to the adoptive parents if that information becomes available and to file the supplemental information where the original report is filed. The supplemental information shall be retained for as long as the original report is required to be retained.

Added by Acts 1995, 74th Leg., ch. 20, Sec. 1, eff. April 20, 1995.

Sec. 162.006. RIGHT TO EXAMINE RECORDS. (a) The department, licensed child-placing agency, person, or entity placing a child for adoption shall inform the prospective adoptive parents of their right to examine the records and other information relating to the history of the child. The person or entity placing the child for adoption shall edit the records and information to protect the identity of the biological parents and any other person whose identity is confidential.

Heidi Cox says one of the recommendations from the Adoption Review Committee will be that all records will be scanned into a computer database as they are created so information is "less likely" to be lost. Less likely? Was this recommendation decided before or after the news stories hit the airwaves?

Everybody reading this knows that adoption and foster care are fundamentally broken. Now we know so broken that files can't even be maintained with any accuracy. So broken that seriously disturbed children are being scapegoated. So broken that the Texas Attorney General lies. Just how much other information has been "lost?" How many victims is the state creating? How many secrets are in those locked files?

Thanks, Marlena!

Tennessee Convolution: A Resource

Kansas, Alaska, Oregon, Alabama, New Hampshire, and Maine are the only states that recognize the right of all adopted persons, without exception, to receive their original birth certificates upon request. Deformers, however, attempting to foist their capitulation obc bills as the real deal, like to cook the books, adding other states, with conditional access to the list. They fail to mention those states are compromised and restrictive. To deformers, it appears, any state that offers some access, must be an open state. You can count on Tennessee to be at the top of their revisionist list.

Around 1999, a couple years into the law, I received an email from a Tennessee bastard who refused to play along. In good faith he'd signed two or three affidavits and had been waiting 18 months to get his cert. Every time he inquired about his request, he'd get back more forms to sign. The last time I heard from him he said he'd decided to pay a searcher rather than continue to play ring around the bureaucrat.

In 2000 I attended an adoption conference which featured the administrator of the Tennessee obc release program. She'd started the job only a couple day before the law went into effect, and was only told about it as an after thought. Oh, by the way, next week you'll be buried with reporters and bastards. She showed us her bound copy of the law and the regs that went with it Something like 121 pages. She threw her hands up in the air.

I still get an occasional requests about Tennessee access and want to throw my hands up in the air, too. One may as well try to explain the IRS Tax Code.

Although, a good decision came out of the litigation, Doe v Sundquist, (1997) that followed passage of the Tennessee bill, no activist could seriously consider Tennessee an open state with its convoluted disclosure veto, complicated and undoubtedly unconstitutional de facto restraining order contact veto, and penalties, fines, and hoops to jump through. I don't mean to disparage the hard work Caprice East, Denny Glad, Bob Tooke, Fred Greenman and others put into the passage and defense of the law. Some of the work is really original, and I hope somebody has written up the history of the campaign. It's our history and it belongs to us. The problem is, the law leaves people behind--a substantial number--and it's going to be damned difficult to pick them up. We gave you this, now you want that. Sorry. pat pat pat.

Tennessee adoptee and Pennsylvania adoptee rights activist and blogger, Amanda Transue Woolston, has created a great webpage, Tennessee Adoptee Rights and Liberty dedicated to Tennessee fact, fiction and farce. It's a wonderful one-stop place to sort this mess out . Or rather Amanda has a sorted it out for you. Her Reform Tennessee link explains the law and she's got links to to the law itself and various state offices. I've never see a state that gouges adoptees for their obc. Then there's Tennessee which expects you to go a week or two without groceries.

While deformers cheer their half-measures, somewhere along the line, somebody will have pull a clean-up operation. It's a lot easier when you don't leave anybody behind the first time.

Also see the Tennessee Adoptee Rights page on Facebook.

Texas Blank Slate: Adopters Have No Right to Background Information

More tales from the wacky world of adoption. I am only going by the news article I'm using below. I'd like to think there is more to this story but since it's Texas and the topic is adoption...

WFAA-TV, Dallas-Fort Worth reports that the Texas Attorney General has told would-be adopters "Phillip" and "Sara" that they have no right to know the background of the four children they were adopting from the state's foster care program.

In 2008, already the parents of five biological children, the Arizona couple was suckered by a Texas Department of Family and Protective Services flyer advertising a sibling group. Before they knew it, instead of adopting one child as planned, they were hooked on the sibs. Although the sibs had suffered "some neglect and physical abuse," Texas authorities, they claim, told them the kids, ages, 3, 4, 5,and 6 were healthy and not in therapy. They were assured that the children had suffered no sexual abuse.

Within a couple weeks of arrival at their new home, the two oldest were molesting the younger bio kids.

The Arizona placement agency the couple worked with told them to contact their Texas caseworker. The paperwork they received back from Texas, including reports of severe sexual abuse and devastating psych evaluations were described by WFAA as "too graphic to share" with viewers. That's what Texas must have thought, too, when they suckered "Phillip" and "Sara" into taking the kids off their hands.

Of course, the agencies are eating themselves. The Arizona agency (name not publicized, naturally) claims it never received the evaluations and sexual abuse files from Texas. Texas CPS says, in a veiled admission of guilt, that the full case history "should have been given to the agency." Everybody is covering their ass or some government functionary is covering it for them. The Texas Attorney General says that the CPS case worker and her supervisor, who "Phillip" and "Sara" are now suing, enjoy immunity from prosecution. If you're thinking about adopting from Tarrant County CPS, don't!

It gets better:

The Texas Attorney General's office argues that if any harm was done to the Arizona family, it was the fault of the adoptive children or the Arizona agency they worked through — not the Texas caseworkers. Further, the state attorney argues, Texas families don't have a legal right to know the histories of the children they adopt or foster.

Let me repeat that: No legal right to know the histories of the children they adopt or foster. Are these people smoking Spice? Don't ever buy a used car in Texas!

I really can't believe I'm reading this. Even reactionaries like Gladney are real picky now about background information getting to adopters, if for no other reason than to keep from being sued. Unlike government hacks, Gladney hacks don't have immunity. If the AG thinks adopters and fostersers don't have a right to know anything about the charges they're inviting into their homes and families, you can bet they think bastards have no right to know anything about themselves.

It's also disturbing that a bunch of fat government lawyers have decided to pass the buck to two very troubled children. I'm surprised they didn't blame "Philip" and "Sara" and their overachieving bio kids, too. Such is the state of current America where responsibility for inept government acts is placed on the head of six-year olds.

Are the folks down in the AG's office so adoption illiterate that they've never heard of the seminal Burr v Stark Cty Bd. of Comms, Gibbs v Ernst, and a list of other wrongful adoption decisions? Unlike Ohio, maybe adoption fraud is OK in Texas. Or maybe "Philip" and "Sara" should throw up their hands and cry that if they'd known the truth they'd never have adopted the bad seeds. That would make the case consumer complaint, and the AG might sympathize with them.

Taking their adoption responsibilities seriously, however, "Philip" and "Sara" say they did not want to return the siblings to their sender. "These kids are not throwaway kids" "Sara" told WFAA. Arizona Children Services had other ideas, though. "Phillip" and "Sara" were warned if they kept the siblings, who have been diagnosed so dangerous that they demand "round the clock watching, their own children could be removed from their home because of an "usafe environment." Then, somebody could adopt their kids! What a cluster....Thus, the couple were forced to relinquish the sibs to save the rest of their family. Now the siblings "are getting the help they need" (I bet!). The bios are in "counseling." And "Philip" and "Sara" are in court.

Texas, you really know how to promote National Adoption Awareness Month.

Thanks, Marlena!

Small Update on BJ Lifton

I'll be updating and expanding last night's post on BJ Lifton's passing. In the meantime I have a couple updates from Facebook. As I learn more I'll post it here.

BJ's husband Bob, posted this on FB tonight

I am Robert Jay Lifton, and write to convey the extremely painful and deeply sad news that BJ, my wife of 58 years and lifelong partner, died on Nov. 19 in Mass Gen Hosp of complications of pneumonia. I want to thank you for your overwhelming outpouring of loving testimonials. We are planning a memorial and will notify you of its date.

Also on Facebook Cathie Hanlon has organized A Moment in Memory of BJ Lifton:

Stop for a moment, say a prayer for her family. Remember BJ's fortitude. She spoke for us all! She was our voice who sought the truth for us all!

Click on the link to "attend." Of course, you can do this on your own, too.

We Lose Another One: B J Lifton

At 11:45 tonight B J Lifton died. I don't have the details but I know she had been hospitalized with pneumonia for the past week. I haven't seen any details yet, but I'm sure some will be forthcoming tomorrow.

I first read BJ's books in 1980, right after I got I got my obc. I took Lost & Found out of the Ohio State University Library. It was old and beat up having undergone numerous readings. I was stunned that somebody was actually writing about adoptees from an "us" POV. " Although I didn't agree with everything she said, I was hooked. For the longest time I was convinced that nobody else would ever write about adoption, at least not that way. In a way I was right.

I didn't meet BJ until about 17 years later during the AAC Seattle conference. She had joined Bastard Nation. And boy, were we excited to have such a prominent member. Alfie and I were in the hospitality suite. Alfie was dressed as a cow and I was wearing a big red devil's tail. Shea was with the band. BJ took my hand. I didn't know what to say. All I could think of was, "I'm sitting next to BJ Lifton in this silly costume and she's holding my hand"

Over the years I recovered and we became friends. She was convinced that someday I'd come around and get interested in the psychological problems of adoptees. I never did.

Every time I saw BJ the first thing she'd say was, "And how are the Bastards?"

The last time I heard that familiar question was at the ASAC conference at MIT this summer. She'd had health problems for some time. She seemed better, but looked frail. (Bobbi Beavers, BJ, Maryanne Cohen, MIT)

BJ brought so manly of us into the movement. She was exasperating sometimes, but never dull, and she always cared.

We'll miss you, BJ!

I should have some old pictures. If I do, I'll post them later.

Exclusive Video from the Willard: What the American Adoption Industry Doesn't Want You to See

This afternoon Bastardette and her news team arrived in Washington to cover the National Council for Adoption's 30th anniversary festivities at The Willard.

Earlier this evening, we shot this exclusive footage of what happens behind the closed doors of adoption industry privilege and money-- where the industry believes it is safe from the prying eyes of the public. We believe this expose of the industry and it sycophants frolicking and fighting while our birth certificates remain sealed will shock the public into action.



We have had an exhausting day. I need to retire to my $339/night room to clean up. I'll resume resume regular blogging tomorrow.

Birth Certificate Webinar: What the Adoption Industry Thinks of NJ's Compromise Bill

I was going to write about something else tonight, but then this came along on Facebook (thank you Claud!). I couldn't resist:

Adoption - The Open Birth Certificate Webinar sponsored by the New Jersey State Bar Association. Don't expect to catch a break. The NJ Bar opposes your right to your own birth certificate

The webinar will be held Thursday (November 18) from noon to 1:00 PM. The Convenor is Daniel M Serviss, a family law attorney in New Jersey with Greenbaum, Rowe, Smith and Davis. He is not a member of Quad A (The American Academy of Adoption Attorneys) which also hates bastards except when members can make a bag of money facilitating their transfer from inappropriate birther wombs to appropriate adopter cradles.

Bastard Nation leaves no one behind, and it's no secret that BN and Bastardette oppose the current NJ piece-a-crap AB1399/1406/S799. But we also oppose the NJ Bar's bright bulb (see below): the Confidential Intermediary System. You know, when the state hires low-paid functionaries and contractors to hunt down parents in hiding so you don't have to. Even compliant compromisers hate this. Here is Bastard Nation's policy paper on CI's, The Intermediary System is not the Solution, which includes:

But there is one thing no person can compromise without serious consequences to his own self-esteem, and that is his right to direct his own life and make his own personal decisions free of the interference of the State. The price of the intermediary compromise is too high in terms of pride, dignity and self-respect. The adoptee position rests on two principles that must remain inflexible. The first is that each person has a right to his own history and identity. The second is that adult adoptees have the same competence and right of non-adoptees to manage their own affairs without supervision of the State through its agencies. The underlying principle of the adoption movement is the determination to be free of those limitations that have not been imposed on non-adopted citizens. The issue is whether adoptees are to be allowed to emancipate from chattel-child status into autonomous adults, or are they to continue to be infantilized by the ongoing control of the State and agency, birthparents and adoptive parents? Lincoln once said "for although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it by being a slave himself." Would legislators either seek or accept social work supervision of their own personal affairs? On what evidence do they decide that they are capable of managing without supervision, but adult adoptees are not?

******

Here's the write-up on the webinar. Note that the NJ Bar is greatly concerned about how records access for adults will affect adoptive parents. This really means, paps-in-hand with a jones for somebody else's Bumble.

Webinar: Adoption- The Open Birth Certificate Issue

Join us for a Webinar on November 18

12:00 PM - 1:00 PM EST

To register for this webinar, click here.

Speaker:

Daniel M. Serviss, Esq.

In March of this year, the NJ Senate approved legislation to allow adult adoptees to get copies of their original birth certificates and medical histories. The bill still needs Assembly approval. In the interim, many parties are adding their voices to this discussion, one of which is the NJ State Bar Association (NJSBA). Dan Serviss, a partner in our Family Law Group and a member of the NJSBA committee that is submitting draft legislation, will discuss the important issues in this debate, for example:

* Should there be an intermediary between adult adoptees and birth parents?
* Is a one year opt out period for birth parents to register to remain anoymous?
* What are the concerns of adoptive parents and how might they be affected if any form of legislation is approved on this issue?
* What has been the history of both sides of this discussion?

Who should attend:
* Adoptees
* Adoptive parents
* Biological parents
* Social Workers
* Human Resource professionals
* Lawyers
* Anyone with an interest in the issue

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

******

The NJ Bar and Quad A oppose records access for all bastards. I can't find a statement on the current piece-a-crap bill pushed by accommodaters but I did find the Bar's objections (I had problems opening it, but this is the correct link) to a similar earlier bill, S 611. Along with the usual blahblahblah we find a couple curious problems wedged in:

(C) DISREGARDS THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ADOPTION: note special defense of Catholic Charities who has promises to keep and dirt to hide.

One of the fundamental benefits of adoption is that a birth mother can make a painful sacrifice for her biological child’s best interest and then move on with her life. Requiring a woman to continually submit information in the family history form will not allow her to enjoy a feeling of closure after her traumatic experience. It forces her to relive it continuously throughout the rest of her life.

Furthermore, many children adopted in the past were adopted with an understanding between birth parents and adoptive parents that unless both the child (after age 18) and the birth parent agreed, there would be no revealing of the birth parent’s identity. For example, a child adopted through Catholic Charities is placed with the adoptive parents with specific reliance by the birth parents that the birth parents’ identity will not be disclosed without the express consent and desire of the birth parent. Often, it is the security of this knowledge that would be the reason a birth parent and/or an adoptive parent chooses an agency. To disregard that sacred reasoning is a breach that reflects a total disregard of the complexity of adoption.

and the really oddball:

(E) THE BILL MAY ENCOURAGE WOMEN TO KEEP BABIES THAT MAY BE BEST

CARED FOR BY AN ADOPTIVE FAMILY.

Women who place their babies up for adoption look forward to moving on with their lives and

putting the experience behind them. Many come to peace with the decision they made and want to begin a new life. They struggle with the process of severing the bond that has been created with the child during pregnancy. Telling a women who is considering adoption that she will never be able to completely detach herself from that child and live the rest of her life anonymously unless she constantly submits to an invasive and tedious process may lead to her foregoing adoption altogether.

Now let's get this straight. A woman who wants to maintain her "anonymity" through a sealed birth certificate and detach from her kid will keep and attach to the kid if she can't be promised that anonymity in adoption. HoHoHo OK!

That's Adoption Bizzaro World, folks. Us do opposite of all Earthly things Us hate beauty! Us love ugliness! Is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World!

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I enjoy walking into the lion's den and I'm in for tomorrow.