I'd like to meet:

We'd like to meet our original birth certificates and other ..s that the government seals, holds, and hides from us about our births, heritages, and histories.

If and when we feel like it, we'd like to meet our biological relatives without interference from the adoption industry and its government shills.

We'd like to meet adoption industrialists and trade lobbyists who run around the country yabbering to politicians about how "birthparents" need protected from their own offspring (or we need protected from them) and find out just what their problem is with us.

We'd like to meet a logical explanation of why adoptees don't deserve the same right to their own public birth records and identity as the non-adopted.
We'd like to meet dedicated adoptee rights advocates who unlike Benedict Bastards, won't sell out their sister and brother Bastards and adoptees with compromise legislation such as disclosure and contact vetoes, mandatory confidential intermediary systems, mandatory reunion registries, and tiered access based on the date of adoption that benefit the few and leave the rest behind.

We'd also like to meet Christopher Walken.

We want to meet you.
Bastard Nation membership is open to all,
regardless of adoptive status!
Join us in our efforts to end a hidden legacy of
shame, fear and venality.

BASTARD NATION: The Adoptee Rights Organization
PO Box 1469
Edmond, OK 73083
www.bastards.org
[email protected]


NOTICE: Bastard Nation welcomes all "friends" who support the right of all adoptees to identity and birth records. We do not, however, accept "friends" who solicit children for adoption on MySpace.

Music:

We've never taken a survey on our eclectic membership's musical tastes. We suppose it includes Mozart, the 3 Bs (Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms), Artie Shaw, the Dorseys, Edith Piaf, Chet Baker, Sade, Snoop, death metal, Slipknot, the Donnas, Dionysus, and the Chemical Brothers. There are, however, a small "genre" of actual Bastard Nation songs and performers: Overkill's Bastard Nation; country singer Kevin Welch's Bastard Nation and Satyricon's Repined Bastard Nation . There's a band in Belgium called Bastard Nation, too. But we get a slam dunk with the German band Bastard Nation and their anthem, Bastard Nation.Just hit our music button above.
In March 2007 BN co-founder and executive chair Marley Greiner met Late Discovery Adoptee DMC at the American Adoption Conference. A download of Darryl's remix of the Harry Chapin classic, Just Like Me with Sarah McLachlan is under BN's "About Me"

Movies:

Measurable Rights: the Fight for Open Records in Oregon is a documentary by Paul R. Fournier. In Paul's words, the film is "the story of Helen Hill, who used Oregon’s Ballot Measure 58 to open sealed birth certificates for adult adoptees. Her initiative turned into a civil rights battle that caused a sea of change in adoption laws across the country." If you want to unseal records in your state by ballot initiative, this is how to do it.
We also like Unlocking the Heart of Adoption a documentary ary by our good friend first mom activist Sheila Ganz. It's been shown on numerous PBS stations and film festivals, and is used to educate legislators and the public about adoptee issues and records access.
Then there's the Oscar winning Mike Leigh film Secrets and Lies , whose release coincided with BN's launch. Our Secrets and Lies public awareness" pickets at movie theatres across the country culminated with Oscar Week events in Hollywood. We met with Leigh and Secrets and Lies star Brenda Blethyn who were incredulous that US and Canadian adoptees are under the iron heel of the state. The action ended with a Black Tie "picket" at the Oscars where we were met by disapproving do-gooders already in a wad over the nomination of the People vs Larry Flynt. That illegitimates dared show their faces in public was so much for them that they reverted to name-calling.
Of course, Bastards also like adoptee killer, crazee birthparent, and black market adoption films, Shirley Temple, Lillian Gish, Wuthering Heights, and "fallen women" and Lifetime movies. BN Exe. Chair Marley Greiner's paper on fallen women films, Where We Came From, delivered at the 2005 Alliance for the Study of Adoption, Identity, and Kinship conference at the University of Tampa is here .

We are especially fond of That Hagen Girl staring Shirley Temple and Ronald Reagan. These two American icons were embarrassed by the film. It got terrible reviews. The audience booed at its premiere! Shirley's adult film career nearly tanked. Reagan demanded a new ending. Does Mary Hagen run off and marry her suspected father or just a man twice her age? Or maybe they're just doing dinner in Chicago? But a re-look of the film nearly 60 years after the disaster shows, in a perverse way, that everybody was wrong. Late Discovery Adoptee issues, attempted sexual assault, gossip, ridicule, lies, insanity, attempted suicide. We watch in total understanding and horror as Mary's Bastard Moment turns into her Bastard Year. Sure, it's funny, it's absurd, it edges on perversion. But it's more real and gritty than any of those "adoption-positive" sappy films paps cry at.

Television:

Except for Oprah, Montel, Lifetime movies, the L&O franchise, and soaps, does TV do adoption? Props to Tom Pelphrey for his stunning Emmy Award-winning portrayal of angry tortured adoptee Jonathan Randall on Guiding Light. Too bad Jon is currently "dead." His niece Daisy could sure use a friendly shoulder. Nobody notices that stealing cars, shoplifting, trying to seduce her stepfather, hooking up with the hitman who ran down her cousin, spending the summer in "juvie," and taking up with her long-lost unknown stepbrother Raf has anything to do with adoption, though she's said repeatedly she feels like a reject. And let's not even think about Passions !

Books:

Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation and Ballot Initiative 58 by E.Wayne Carp. This is our favorite book…and yes, it’s all about us! Read the in-depth story of how Helen Hill, Bastard Nation and the voters of Oregon defeated adoption industry lies and restored the right of records and identity for Oregon adoptees. No social disruption. No homewrecking. No axes. And no, we didn’t buy the election as one prominent bureaucrat said! Imagine!
Here are some other favorites. Some are written by BNationals, others by Friends of Bastard Nation and others by perfect strangers. We’ll let you figure it out.
Adoption Mystique by Joanne Wolf Small. Too bad politicians can’t read! Joanne says it all! Growing in the Dark: Adoption Secrecy and Its Consequences by Janine Baer. Learn the history of sealed records in California. Every sealed state needs a book like this. Mirah Riben’s new book The Stork Market: America’s Multi-billion Dollar Unregulated Adoption Industry joins her earlier, The Dark Side of Adoption , in exposing the underside of adoption,
Then there’s Adoption: Unchartered Waters by Dr. David Kirschner. This book clarifies thoughts on his “adopted child syndrome” thesis. We disagree with Dave, on a number of issues but it’s a good read…especially if you’re into adoptees who kill. (And who isn’t?) It’s also a good intro to Bastard Nation’s own Adopted Child Syndrome Family Cookbook . This thoughtful mediation on amom cooking will let you recreate those happy days of ribbon salad and Velveeta in the privacy of your own kitchen. Your kids (if you have any) will love you for it.
Fumbling Toward Divinity: The Adoption Scriptures by Craig Hickman, a finalist in the 2006 Lambda Book Awards, is a stunning memoir about growing up adopted, black and queer. Craig's letter to the State of Wisconsin is worth the price of the book!
Is George Elliot an intimate part of your life? She should be! Look at adoption from a literary POV with two books edited by Marianne Novy: Imaginging Adoption: Essays on Literature and Culture and Reading Adoption: Family and Difference in Fiction and Drama . Marianne and her colleagues rock! And don’t forget that most articulate adoptee Edward Albee . The American Dream, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Three Tall Women, Tiny Alice, and Zoo Story examine the bumble-of- joy absurdity of adoption through the lens of materialism and consumerism that should resonate in every thinking bastard's brain.
Betty Jean Lifton has probably done more than anyone to de-freak and de-stigmatize adoptees and bring them the into political arena. Her Twice Born: Memoirs of an Adopted Daughter was recently reissued. This. and her other books Journey of the Adopted Self: A Quest for Wholeness and Lost and Found: The Adoption Experience have nurtured a generation. You can't miss with BJ!
Last year’s blockbuster The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade is essential reading for equal access advocates Fessler and the women she interviewed debunk the idea that first mothers willingly surrendered their “unwanted babies” to adoption much less ever wanted “anonymity.”
Girls fits neatly with Rickie Solinger’s earlier work Wake Up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v Wade and Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States and Regina Kunzel’s Fallen Women, Problem Girls: Unmarried Mothers and the Professionalization of Social Work. Also check out The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap by Stephanie Coonz.
For more on the history of adoption secrecy try Family Matters: Secrecy and Disclosure in the History of Adoption by E. Wayne Carp. We part company with Wayne about half way through, but this is another essential book for your activist library. Another important book is Adoption, Identify and Kinship: The Debate Over Sealed Birth Records by Katarina Wegar. And of course, the “modern adoption classic” Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution is Transforming America by Adam Pertman.
If you’re heavy into feminist theory Adoption Matters: Philosophical and Feminist Essays ed. Sally Haslinger and Charlotte Witt is for you, though probably not best for the beach. We also recommend Families by Law: An Adoption Reader , ed. Naomi R Cahn and Joan Heifetz Hollinger.
Unfortunately, not much has been written by or about first dads. A great source for dads though is Erik Smith at eriksmith.org . Not a book now…but maybe some day.
BACK TO THE FUTURE Baby Dumping is something we wish we didn’t have to deal with. Unfortunately “legalized abandonment” aka Safe Haven laws is a brickbat the adoption secret keepers have been lobbing at us since Oregon. If you think “baby boxes” and “safe haven” schemes are new, check out these books. The Kindness of Strangers: The Abandonment of Children in Western Europe from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance by John Boswell, a sweeping history of state and culturally facilitated child abandonment and its dire consequences. Sacrificed for Honor: Italian Infant Abandonment and the Politics of Reproductive Control by David I. Kertzer, is a stunning account of surveillance and control of unmarried mothers in Italy, and the laws that forced them to give up their babies shortly after birth. The “rota” (baby wheel, by the way, is back in Italy. Editor Margaret Spinelli, MD begins to fill the knowledge gap on why women kill their children with Infanticide: Psychosocial and Legal Aspects on Mothers Who Kill Finally, Sally Howard’s Finding Me in a Paper Bag serves as a cautionary real-life tale for baby dump do-gooders about the effects of abandonment on the abandoned from the pen of a foundling/ adoptee/first mother/adoptee and first parent rights activist who's experienced it all
KNOW YOUR ENEMY. Don’t flinch at spending your hard cash on the works of the opposition. If you ignore what the enemy says about you, you’ll never win. And it’s endlessly entertaining to boot! The National Council of Adoption’s Factbook 3 (weighing about as much as a newborn dropped off at an ER, but not quite as cute) is a treasure trove of stereotype, mis-and dis-information, and propaganda about anything that even whispers progressive adoption practice. It's distributed free to pols and anybody who's anybody in adoption wonk world. Why Bastard Nation hardly recognizes itself in FB3’s pages. Neither will you!
Factbook 4 was released this summer. As expected, it presents us with a nicer kinder NCFA. No personal insults accusations, or axes! Why NCFA we barely know ya! What fun is that? We still recommend it, though: If you want to open your records you need this information!And try out NCFA's baybee harvesting handbook Birthmother, Good Mother while you're at it.
FB4 and BMGM can be ordered online from NCFA; FB3 is now downloadable on its site .
Authors Ann Fessler (The Girls Who Went Away) and Craig Hickman (Fumbling Toward Divnity), American Adoption Congress, March 10, 2007, Wakefield, MA.
Featured BookThe Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller who Corrupted Adoption by Barbara Bisanz Raymond hit the stands in May 5. And oh what a book it is!
For those of you who aren't familiar to Georgia Tann, she was a Tennessee baby thief who worked her evil with the full knowledge of courts, social workers, and politicians. Between 1924 and 1950 she arranged 5000 "adoptions"--many of them of children she'd kidnapped or obtained by other illegal or unethical means. At least 50 children died under her "care."
Tann stole from the poor to sell to the rich. Sometimes she just gave babies away to the child-hungry denizens of Tennessee's power structure, all too happy to turn their backs on justice in order to fill their nurseries with un..ed children to call their own. As part of Boss Crump's Memphis machine Tann's political influence in Tennessee was immense and unheard of for a woman, even now.Raymond argues that Georgia Tann invented, popularized and commercialized adoption as we know it today with its secret closed and codified system of identity erasure and falsified birth certificates.Tann's influence did not end with her death in 1950. It is carried today by the approximate 6 million adopted persons and their birth and adoptive families in the US (and more in Canada) whose records remain sealed by the state.
On June 7 Raymond appeared on NPR's Diane Rehm. She knocked the whole thing right out of the ballpark. The show can be downloaded at www.wamu.org/programs . We'll keep you updated on Baby Thief events.
UPDATE! Publisher's Weekly has named The Baby Thief one of the Top 20 non-fiction books of the year! (Nov. 6, 2007)
Bastard Blog RollAmy Burt: Adoptee Amy: Adoption and Its Triad: also on MySpace
Anita Field: Bastard Grannie Annie
Marley Greiner, Exe Chair, BN: The Daily Bastardette also on MySpace
Craig Hickman: Fumbling Toward Divinity
Ron Morgan: BB Church’s Funhouse Also, check out BB's video blogs on YouTube.
Mirah Riben: Professionals and Parents for Family Preservation

Heroes:

The history of adoptee rights is for the most part still unwritten. Here are a few of our heroes who have taken the heat. Some are BNationals, others aren't. They have all, with their courage and convictions, refused to back down, and by doing so, moved us closer to a day when the identities of adopted persons everywhere are no longer held as state secrets.
Jean Paton , adoptee. The "Mother of Adoptee Rights, Jean worked for 60 years and never gave up the fight. She coined the term "Bastards are Beautiful."
..ref..http://www.bjlifton.com/Betty Jean Lifton , adoptee. Activist, author of Journey of the Adopted Self and other adoptee-empowering books. BJ introduced a generation of adoptees to the idea that it's OK to think being adopted isn't normal. (see "Books")
Helen Hill, adoptee. Petitioner for Oregon's Ballot Measure 58. Helen made history by taking our rights to the people...and winning...making Oregon the first state in the US to rescind anti-adoptee laws. She also put sealed records on the cover of Rolling Stone. Got records? Max does .
Rep. Jeff Dolabare, non-adopted; David Ansardi, Sandra Pears-Wilson, adoptees, and the Alabamans who took on that most conservative of states and won. Alabama? Who woulda thought? Rep. Dolabare had an adoptee in his family, and he cared. RIP, Jeff.
Sen. Lou D'allesandro, adoptive father; Rep. Janet Allen, adoptee; and the adoptees, first parents, and adoptive parents who kept the vision, making New Hampshire the second state to restore adoptee rights. Every state needs a Senator Lou! And a State Rep who wants her OBC! (That's Janet on the right, getting her OBC, January 3, 2004.)
OBC for ME/Access Maine: Bobbi Beavers 2nd row, 2nd from right); Rep. David Farrington, and Sen. Julia Benoit, who by the way. is adopted came on board this year...and what a ride it's been! NOTE TO ACTIVISTS: Elect more adoptees to state office!
Hawai'ian Governor Linda Lingle for defending the identity and civil rights of Hawai'ians by vetoing so-called safe haven bills in 2003 and 2007. Although the legislature overrode the 2007 veto and baby dumping was legalized. we salute Gov. Lingle for her courage and tenacity.
Bastard Nation's French "alter-ego" Les X en colere (Angry X.) Since 1941 hundreds of thousands of French citizens, born under Accouchement sous X (X Laws) have been denied access to their own birth records due government promises of "anonymous" birth to parents--similar to Safe Haven laws in the US. Enacted by the Vichy government to hide the sexual misconduct of Nazi soldiers and French collaborators, Accouchement continues to anonomize several hundred children each year. In 2003 the X's took their case to the European Court of Human Rights, and learned what we all know: adopted people don't count. Under new anti-terrorism laws, those Born Under X are denied passports and other rights enjoyed by the non-adopted due to lack of "real" identity papers. We expect adopted USians and Canadians may soon suffer the same.
The Axis of Evil Adoptees just can't get no respect!
Opposition to adoptee rights is not limited by social ideology, political party, or religious affiliation. "Liberals" are as likely to oppose adoptee rights as are "conservatives"--the only difference being that "conservatives are vicious and "liberals" sneaky about it. Both frame their arguments against us around "privacy" and "reproductive choice," (ie abortion) though no one has ever sufficiently explained how owning an original birth certificate or knowing our heritage and genealogy or having a relationship with relatives relates to their allegations.
The Axis of Evil believes that women are stupid. it pokes its nose up their skirts as often as they can get away with it. (Men are seldom mentioned other than as "sperm donors" or "drive-by dads".) If adult adoptees, past, present, and future, are "allowed" to have their original birth certificates, women everywhere will lose their "privacy rights" and be forced into abortion. Otherwise, 20, 30 or 50 years later, dirty little secrets will appear on the doorstep mysteriously--usually on Christmas morning. Of course, historically, the adoption industry never cared a fiddler's fruitcake about "birthmother privacy." Officially, records were sealed to "protect" the integrity of adoptive family. In reality, they were sealed to protect the ass of the industry.
AXIS OF EVIL--SEALED RECORDS SECTION: We have included only the biggies. We're sure you have your own set of homegrowns.
The National Council for Adoption . Founded by Texas oil money in 1980 as a non-profit to "promote adoption" by keeping original birth records sealed from adoptees, NCFA is the red meat industry lobbyist and propagandist. Even adoption "practitioners" who hate NCFA let it do their dirty work for them. Historically secular, in the last 10 years NCFA has increasingly aligned itself with evangelical Christian organizations, adoption agencies, and "crisis pregnancy centers." Without NCFA and its well-heeled funders and friends in high places, it is possible that many states would have restored adoptee rights by now. NCFA gives them an excuse not to.
The National Right to Life Committee- Viewing adoptees as saves from the “abortion mill,” NRTL argues that adoptee rights and OBC access are "pro-abortion." DITTO: American Life League; Focus on the Family and its state "family council” affiliates; Family Research Council; Life Issues Institute.
The American Civil Liberties Union - Supporting everybody’s rights, but those of adoptees, the ACLU argues that adoptee identity rights attack women's "privacy" rights" and "reproductive choice." If adoptees regain the right to their birth records, abortion will increase. (Why do they care?) DITTO: NARAL-Pro-Choice America; Planned Parenthood.
Hear My Voice - The former DeBoers Committee established during the infamous Baby Jessica case, HMV never met a child who didn't need removed from their natural parents and adopted by "worthy" couples. Adoptees never grow up. Access to OBCs or recognition of adoptees as anything but adoption industry chattel is an attack on adoption.
AXIS OF EVIL--BABY DUMP SECTION: Legalized baby dumping, aka Baby Moses or Safe Haven laws, are--surprise!-- supported by the Adoptee Rights Axis of Evil: Sealed Records Section as a way to "protect" the privacy of "desperate mothers" who want to get rid of their newborns without the hassle of ethical informed surrender. Or a dirty little secret later. Or more likely, those who are ignorant about services available to women with less-than-happy pregnancies and need to remain ignorant to "save adoption" from uppity adoptees. Baby Dump laws were pushed on legislatures just around the time that adoptees regained their rights in Oregon and Alabama. NCFA made no secret that dump laws were the backdoor solution to intrusive ungrateful adoptees beating down the doors of Vital Stats for their birth certificates: just drop the baby off anonymously with no shame, no blame, no name. We won't ask you any embarrassing questions and you can go on your way as if nothing happened. Oh,and, btw, your little bastard will thank you for it. If you come down with an infection from your unattended birth or bleed to death since we told you nobody had to know--well, stuff happens.
Though backed by NCFA (the National Safe Haven Alliance is run out of its headquarters), baby dumping has taken on a life of it own. Here is a selected list of kitchen-table do-gooders--NGO non-profits--who help the state to strip adoptees of their identities under the guise of baby-saving. All of them have webpages, and many are on MySpace. BN refuses to advertise their services here.
CALIFORNIA: Garden of Angels; CONNECTICUT/NEW JERSEY/NEW YORK: The Children First; FLORIDA: A Safe Place for Newborns; ILLINOIS: Save Abandoned Babies Foundation; INDIANA: A Safe Place for Newborns; MINNESOTA: A Safe Place for Newborns; NEW ENGLAND: Baby Save Haven New England.NEW YORK: AMT Children of Hope TEXAS: Baby Moses Project
OBC Request StatsThe Axis of Evil says that most adoptees are uninterested in their roots and records. Here's the latest stats on OBC requests in Oregon, New Hampshire, and Alabama.
OREGON
May 31, 2000-January 16, 2008
Records sent: 9,267
Contact preference forms submitted by birthparents: 503
Number asking for contact with adoptee: 391
Number asking for contact through an intermediary: 29
Number asking for no contact: 85
SOURCE: Oregon Center for Health Statistics
NEW HAMPSHIRE
January 4, 2005-January 4, 2008
Records ordered: 1058
Contact preference forms submitted by birthparents: 56
Number asking for contact with adoptee: 37
Number asking for contact through an intermediary: 7
Number asking for no contact: 12
SOURCE: New Hampshire Department of State Division of Vital Records Administration
ALABAMA
May 15, 2000-February 14, 2007
At this time no statistics are published. According to the February 14, 2007 Birmingham News 3,885 adoptees have requested their birth certificates.
SOURCE: Dorothy Harshbarger, State Registrar for Vital Records.
Unofficial total for the free states of Oregon, New Hampshire and Alabama:
May 31, 2000-January 16,2008
Records retrived: 14,210
Contact preference forms submitted by birthparents: 559
Number asking for contact with adoptee: 428
Number asking for contact through an intermediary: 36
Number asking for no contact: 133
Bad Binkie InitiativeYou’re an adult now, but politicians, reactionary adoption industry lobbyists and the media insist on calling you “adopted child.” How many times have you heard, “Roderick DelPasso, 47, an adopted child, feels he has a right to his birth certificate.” Or “adopted children should be thankful they weren’t tossed in dumpsters, says Marina Gatling, director of the National Right to Lie Committee." Or “We understand an adopted child’s curiosity, but don’t these children have their own children and grandchildren to worry about now?”…editorial, The Utah Secretkeeper. No wonder you can’t get your records. You may look like an adult. You may feel like adult. You may even live like an adult. But you’re really just 4 ½ years old.Help is on the way! Join the Bad Binkie Initiative. Started by activist BB Church, the BBI is an informal education program where adoptees and their friends send binkies to reporters, politicians, and other adoption industry shills who are “unaware” that adoptees grow up. You can read about the BBI at BB Church’s Funhouse and The Daily Bastardette . (type in “binkie” to find posts).
Bastard Swag!Visit the Bastard Boutique for the latest in chic Bastardware. Great conversation starters for airports, Wal-mart, church...and your "post-adoption" social wrecker. A great back-to-school gift for the of-age bastard.