William H. Mild III, retired attorney, forwarded this PDF version of his May 18, 2009 article: Due Process in Adoption? Hardly. This may be freely distributed.

…

…

I write today’s blog post from the point of view of being the daughter of two mothers: one who gave me life and the other who raised me.

It is not easy being the daughter of two mothers, especially since my time with my first mother was so short. She died when I was three months old. She was dying during her pregnancy with me — a death that resulted in my father’s grief and belief that his only option and the best choice of action he could do for me was to relinquish me to the total care of another set of parents.

I do not believe that was the best choice. I needed to be with the family I was born into.

But since I was raised instead by a stranger who became my mother through a legal decree, I struggle through the sadness and loss each and every day of my life. I grieve for the family I lost because of adoption. I grieve for the loss of a mother who left the earth far too early. I grieve for the mother who adopted me as she was misguided in her possessiveness. She clings to me now in a nursing home. I give her what I can, but mostly, what’s done is done. I’m sad for her suffering and pending death. I also have a step mother who is married to my natural father.

Mother’s Day is a day of sadness for me.

I start each Sunday, including Mother’s Day, by attending a service at my local UU Church.

It’s bad enough that a dear friend of mine, a mother of adoption loss, will not attend our local UU Church (she used to) for the hypocrisy there. I agree with her. There’s wealthy adoptive parents who give lip-service about the natural parents of the adopted children they hold dear. Like the adoptive mother who got a standing ovation for adopting a three year old Haitian earthquake survivor. And don’t get me started about the abundance of gays and lesbians at church who use ANONYMOUS sperm and eggs and surrogate mothers and don’t seem to care that they willingly withhold knowledge of the absent genetic parent(s) to the children so created. In the face of all of that, I still attend the Buffalo Unitarian Universalist Church. My friend doesn’t. I miss her. I honor her for her integrity to stay away.

I look beyond these human failings, even our minister who spoke awhile back about the appropriations of other religions, or rather, the miss-appropriations, without even noticing, or caring, that many people appropriate other people’s children with a sense of entitlement.

It is not easy to look beyond these in-your-face adoption assaults.

I am at this church weekly for the spiritual, intellectual, and suburb musical performances of our choir and musicians.

Today’s guest minister, Reverend Sally Hamlin, participated in a service inspired and encouraged by Debra Hafner, an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, sexologist and Director of the Religious Institute.

There was this responsive reading:

A Responsive Reading for Mother’s Day

On Mother’s Day, we honor mothers and caregivers everywhere – women who have given birth, women who have adopted children, women who care for the children of others.

We affirm the nurturing love of mothers, and the blessings of parenthood.

We pray for a society in which pregnancy is freely chosen, and mothers and children receive the care and support they need.

We affirm the sanctity of life and the moral agency of women.

We mourn the 1,500 women around the world who will die today in childbirth, or from the complications of pregnancy, because they lack basic health services.

We envision a world where childbirth is safe, and all children are wanted and loved.

Together, we break the silence surrounding women and their partners who suffer infertility, pregnancy loss, still births, and difficulties in adoption.

We bless them and hold them in love.

We celebrate the many ways that people create families and become mothers in our communities.

We call for a commitment to make every day Mother’s Day.

 © Religious Institute, 2010, May 9

 

And this bulletin was read out loud:  

Global Maternal Health

 * Every minute, a woman dies in childbirth or from pregnancy-related complications – at least half a million women worldwide every year.

* 99 percent of all maternal deaths occur in developing nations. More than half occur in sub-Saharan Africa, and one-third in South Asia.

* Most maternal deaths take place during labor, delivery or in the immediate post-partum period. More than 3.4 million newborns die within the first week of life.

* More than one million children are left motherless every year due to maternal deaths. Children are three to 10 times more likely to die within two years of the mother’s death.

* The leading cause of death for girls ages 15-19 worldwide is pregnancy.

* There is no single cause of death and disability for men that compares with the magnitude of maternal death and disability.

* Doubling current global investments in family planning and pregnancy-related health care (to approximately $24.6 billion) could save the lives of 400,000 women and 1.6 million infants every year.

 The Rachel Sabbath Initiative: Saving Women’s Lives supports the United Nations’ Millennium Development Goal 5, which focuses on improving maternal health. The Religious Institute calls on congregations across the country to raise awareness and support for the UN’s targets of reducing maternal mortality worldwide and achieving universal access to reproductive health care by 2015. This initiative is named for the matriarch Rachel, who died in childbirth (Gen. 35:16-20).

 Religious Institute, 21 Charles Street, Suite 140, Westport, CT 06880. Join the Faithful Voices Network at www.religiousinstitute.org

In an effort to spread the word that maternal health is important, the UU Church sorely misses the mark on the focus of adoption.

Here is what I AM ADDING to the above (in bold and italics):

We don’t have specific statistics, but for every adoptee there is a mother who gave birth. That mother suffers the loss of her child to adoption but society does not recognize nor acknowledge that loss. There are millions of childless mothers (because there are at least 6 to 7 million adoptees in America) who grieve for the loss of their babies and who dread Mother’s Day because they were made feel shame and guilt for even being a mother in the first place. We must practice Adoption Prevention.

A Responsive Reading for Mother’s Day

 On Mother’s Day, we honor mothers and caregivers everywhere – women who have given birth, women who have adopted children, women who care for the children of others.  We also honor mothers who have lost their infants to unwanted relinquishment to the adoption industry by resolving to end this practice of taking other mothers’ children as our own.

We affirm the sanctity of life and the moral agency of women.

We mourn the 1,500 women around the world who will die today in childbirth, or from the complications of pregnancy, because they lack basic health services. We mourn the countless women around the world who suffer the moral indignation of disrespecting the pregnancies and infant births by the unwanted snatching of their infants at the moment of birth at Crisis Pregnancy Centers and Birthing Rooms that allow adopting couples to witness the sacred moment of birth, and mothers who are victims of Open Adoption scams and Open Adoption Agencies. We mourn the scorn still inflicted upon young teens and young women who are not married and humiliated into giving up their wanted babies because society tells them they cannot parent their own children.

We envision a world where childbirth is safe, and all children are wanted and loved.

Together, we break the silence surrounding women and their partners who suffer infertility, pregnancy loss, still births, and difficulties in adoption. Difficulties in adopting other women’s children? We break the silence that women who desperately want their children are taken advantage of by the cruelty of the adoption industry — women who want their children ought to not suffer their children ripped from their arms into the waiting arms of adopting parents. If and only IF a child does not have caring parents is GUARDIANSHIP NOT ADOPTION ever a substitute for motherhood. In cases of abuse and neglect, removing a child from harm is best, but working toward reunification and stabilization of that family unit is primary to the wholeness of that mother and her children.

We bless them and hold them in love.

We celebrate the many ways that people create families and become mothers in our communities. We celebrate to every mother the right to be mothers in life, and to be named on their child’s birth certificate, not dishonored by sealing and falsifying that document. This means that we honor the facts of birth by issuing ONLY 1 true Certificate of Live Birth and strive for the abolition of the amended birth certificate in adoption; such a document is a mockery of motherhood. Ultimately we strive for the abolition of adoption itself for every mother who gives birth and who wants her child needs to be a mother and every child needs their mother. For adoptive mothers everywhere, we strive for the acceptance that the role of raising children can be handled by a caregiver who is a guardian who does not usurp the dignity of another mother by taking her child.

I have no choice but to accept that I have two mothers: one by birth and one by adoption. My lesson learned from my life lived in this reality is to strive for a better world in which the sanctity of motherhood is respected everywhere on this planet. What might appear to be harsh to the adoptive mothers out there is actually a plea: stop trying to own someone else’s child and if you must fulfill your desire to be in a parenting role, be a guardian and not an adoptive mother. A guardian respects that child’s identity and true mother. Adoption, by its very nature, disrespects both the child and her natural mother by destroying the natural mother-child bond. Caring and love in a parenting role can be achieved by guardianship. Offended? I am offended that my life as the daughter of my mother who died in my infancy was not honored nor respected because of the all-almighty power of adoption.

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

PS — See this post: Happy Birthmother Day or Happy Adopter Day; and this quote from AustinHolistic : Which makes me think, if a woman wants her child, we need to provide emotional support, financial support, and psychological support for women who want their children: and this post with this quote: There is no paradox, no contradiction and certainly no upside in having been on the loosing end of the adoption exchange.

Sara Feigenholtz spouted off to an adoption reformer on Monday. Bastardette wrote a post displaying the email and commentary yesterday; see it here.

After reading Ms. Feigenholtz’s email, I decided to give Sara an education by writing her a real letter:

April 27, 2010

Sara Feigenholtz, Illinois State Representative

1051 W. Belmont

Chicago, Illinois 60657

staterep12@aol.com

Dear Sara Feigenholtz:

Sara, you, or a staff member using your email address, wrote the following email to an adoption reformer; shame on you. Very unprofessional, indeed:

To:Lori Jeske

Sent: Monday, April 26, 2010 10:00 PM

Subject: Re: HB 5428

Lori:

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.

YOu sound so positive and committed to opening all records that I wish you could give me the key to your adoption.

Sara, I demand a written apology from you. I am an adoptee, but I am not a bastard.

Sara, I hereby take you up on your offer for a job. I live in the frozen tundra of Buffalo, New York, so moving to Illinois will not be that much of hardship for me. I am a disabled social worker, (SSI not SSDI) disabled by 54 years of stress caused by adoption and ignorance. You will have to provide me with accommodations to my disabilities (which I will not discuss with you until I have the job you offer).

I have sacrificed my life by working on adoption reform and personal recovery from adoption trauma since I was 18 years old. I have been fighting prejudice against all adoptees and our natural parents since 1974. I have been victimized by adoption for all of my life.

I will be happy to work with you to devise a clean bill that will not give compromises: you either have full civil rights, or you don’t. Adoption reform legislation should give all adoptees what they deserve: unconditional access to certified copies of their true and sealed birth certificates. No person is under parental authority after the age of majority, and so it should be in adoption reform.

In fact, I have already done the work for the Federal level. See: Chapter 41, Proposal for Federal Legislation on Adoptees’ Birth Records, in my enclosed book, Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing (http://www.trafford.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?BookId=SKU-000137652). See also: Chapter 37, Presenting My Personal Documents as Evidence of State Fraud. See also: Chapter 38, Unequal Treatment of 1 Half Orphan Out of 36 Resulted in a Traumatic Life Outcome — A Social Work Assessment (of my adoption). Yes: three out of four families (my adoptive mother’s family, my adoptive father’s family and my natural mother’s family) all conspired to keep me away from my siblings and my father. These are the keys to my adoption, as you snidely asked Lori Jeske to provide to you about her adoption. I know you mean legislative and legal keys, but without understanding the family dynamics, you won’t have a clear picture of the destruction caused by adoption. Once you see how the interwoven family dynamics worked within, and because of, the framework of legal adoption, you then have a better picture of what to do to dismantle the beast of adoption and free its victims.

So you think all adoptees are ungrateful bastards, do you? Well, I am not a bastard, but I AM an ungrateful half orphan, dear Queen Sara. How dare you insult me and my fellow adoptees!

Adoptees come in all flavors: adopted by step parents — meaning that they were conceived within a marriage; children of married parents are lost to adoption for a variety of reasons; and many of us were born legitimately but lost one of both parents by death — we are either half or full orphans. All of us in these sub-categories of adoptees are technically NOT illegitimate bastards, but we are all funneled together with bastards under the sealed records laws of adoption. By law, I am treated like a bastard because New York State seized my birth certificate as if I were a criminal, then issued a falsified birth certificate that indicates I was born to woman who factually did not give birth to me.

Meanwhile, illegitimate bastards are conceived everyday and live with their parents in their common-law marriages, and these bastards are never “legitimized” by adoption, nor are they ever given a “new” birth certificate, nor is their birth certificate ever sealed. Not one single legislator has ever given me an explanation for the direct discrimination against all adoptees. In a society that glorifies: single women (lesbians or straight women) with money who can pay for fertility treatments using anonymous sperm; or gay men who use the services of a rental womb of a surrogate mother and then use anonymous eggs to create children; or married people who trick their children into believing that they were conceived within a marriage when, in reality, a mother accepts anonymous sperm and pretends that her husband is the father and that child’s birth certificate does not reflect the truth — NONE of these DC (Donor Conceived) individuals are considered illegitimate bastards, nor are they treated as such in society or by laws that seal and then falsify their birth certificates.

I deeply resent being swept up in the dirt bag and persecuted because I am a half orphaned adoptee. My mother DIED when I was three months old. I was the youngest of five children born to married parents. My father relinquished me and kept the others. And I am expected to be grateful for being raised for 18 years in the same city as my siblings, yet being forced to live a life in protected custody apart from them. Disgusting. This was not only identity theft, but child abuse of me, and the siblings from which I was separated.

At age 54, I am still legally banned from obtaining my own birth certificate, yet my full blood siblings (who also lost their mother and who are also half orphans) can get their birth certificates. We have the same parents. The only difference is that I was surrendered to a closed and sealed adoption.

Adoption is destruction of personhood and family. It should be abolished. And don’t give me any crap such as “what about the children who need homes?” I did not need a new home, my adopting parents wanted a child; it was their insistence that I never see my own full blood siblings. I needed my birth identity and my siblings and my father. I needed to be told when and how my mother died. I needed to be taken to her graveside on Mother’s Day and her birthday and my birthday. I needed the truth. If a child is truly homeless and family-less, then guardianship needs to replace adoption. Guardianship retains the child’s identity and birth certificate, retains family connections and identity formation while providing a home for that child. That’s why I wrote my book as a testimony as to the destructiveness of adoption.

I needed then, as I do now, unconditional access to my sealed and certified real birth certificate. I also need my amended birth certificate stamped in big red letters: VOID. I demand a truthful Certificate of Adoption issued to replace this lousy piece of garbage that I must hold up as my real birth certificate.

The Bill you propose, should I live in Illinois, would not benefit me in any way.

I have worked in adoption reform for the past 36 years. Give me a job, Sara, and I’ll show you how to write a Bill that will take care of adoptees’ long-overdue and long-abused civil rights. Adoptive parents and natural parents do not have the authority over anyone over the Age of Majority. In most states the Age of Majority is 18, some states it is 19, and some states it is 21. If young adults are allowed to die for their country in war, they can certainly have the maturity to handle the emotional impact of their civil rights to the truth of their births. And for those of adoptees who are aging, get the job done right: include us all in clean legislative action. Obviously, I do not buy the notion that this is a State-by-State issue. Civil rights are a Federal concern.

Your website says that you are an “adult adoptee”. Really? You sure holler as a two-faced bigot. Stop being so patronizing.

 I hereby submit my bill for adoption consultant fees of $500 an hour for 2 hours, $45 for the cost of my book, and $20 for shipping and handling to mail the book and legislative tips to you.

Very Truly Yours,

 Joan M Wheeler

born as

Doris M Sippel

PS

I do mean TRULY. I know my birthname and I have my birth certificates because my father gave them to my adopting parents, but I am still legally banned from obtaining my short and long form OBC from the Registrar of Vital Statistics in Buffalo. America is not a free country.

 * * *

Other bloggers on Sara Feigenholtz’s email:

Cheaper Than Therapy: http://lilwalnutbrain.blogspot.com/2010/04/asshat-of-week-illinois-rep-sara.html

Baby Love Child: http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/04/27/illinois-hb5428-and-rep-sara-feigenholtzs-offices-contemptuous-use-of-the-term-ungrateful-bastards/

73adoptee: http://73adoptee.blogspot.com/2010/04/so-called-champion-of-adoptees-illinois.html

Bastard Grannie Annie: http://bastardgrannyannie.blogspot.com/2010/04/another-open-letter-to-representative.html

The Daily Bastardette: http://bastardette.blogspot.com/2010/04/sara-speaks-sara-feigenholtz-tells-us.html

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

Mary L. Foess, adoptee and activist, founder & president of Bonding by Blood, Unlimited, of Vassar, Michigan (since 1988) writes today’s Guest Post:

Wednesday April 21, 2010 (yesterday) is our THIRD hearing in front of the committee for the House of Representatives in our state of Michigan. I will be there, again…for the 3rd time. The irony is, speaking from a non-legal lawyer type convoluted laws angle, it is ironical that those of us who have American Indian blood have to have about 25% to qualify for having our sealed, OBC unsealed. This is discriminatory toward we ‘mostly ‘white’ people. My ancestors on Father’s side go back to the VERY earliest settlers from England…and many signers of the Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, the U.S. Constitution, 2 direct line veterans of the Revolutionary War (great times 5 and great times 4 grandfathers in my bio-dad’s line), and at least 8 U.S. presidents…yet I cannot get my OBC unsealed from Washington DC. Their excuse is ‘jurisdictional boundaries’ between Washington DC, and Maryland, where my adoption record/file was unsealed. Washington DC won’t give it to me ’cause the finalization was in Maryland. My American Indian ancestors OWNED Maryland and Washington DC…and Virginia. An illegal alien can sneak into the U.S.A, give birth, and the offspring has full rights – - – citizenship and his/her birth certificate. Yet, I cannot. I am a descendant of 3 lines from Mayflower family lines. YET, I AM DENIED MY TRUE RECORD OF MY BIRTH.

~ ~ ~ Written by Mary L Foess.

~ ~ ~ Posted by Site Administrator Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

Distribute Freely and Quickly!

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT!
URGENT!
ILLINOIS GROUND ZERO

CONTACT GOVERNOR PAT QUINN NOW

Don’t let Illinois gut what few rights
Illinois adoptees still possess!

This afternoon the Illinois Senate passed HB 5428:
the Illinois Adoption CI/Registry Cash Cow Protection Act

HB 5428 is NOT an original birth certificate access bill
HB 5428 is NOT an adoptee rights bill
HB 5428 is NOT an adoption reform bill

HB 5428 is an adoption industry bill, dressed up as obc access, intended to kill rights-based adoptee access to our own birth records.

HB 5428 is an Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Exchange (IARME) promotion bill with virtually no support from adoptee rights and adoption reform advocates and organizations.

HB 5428 separates adoptees into two classes by date of birth and then into numerous subclasses of “access” and “contact” eligibility dependent on parental and state “consent”

HB 5428 “grants” rights to some at the expense of others.

HB 5428 criminalizes adoptees that use information from the IARME to locate and contact families of origins.

HB 5428 dictates relationships between adults

THE BILL IS HERE: http://www.ilga.gov/ legislation/fulltext.asp? DocName=09600HB5428eng&GA=96& SessionId=76&DocTypeId=HB& LegID=50466&DocNum=5428&GAID= 10&Session=HB%3C/span

GO HERE FOR BN TESTIMONY AND TALKING POINTS http://bastardnation.blogspot. com/2010/04/bastard-nation- testimony-hb-5428-oppose.html

Contact Governor Pat Quinn immediately and ask him to veto HB 5428

 

Springfield Office
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield , IL 62706
Phone: 217-782-0244
TTY: 888-261-3336

Chicago Office
Office of the Governor
James R. Thompson Center
100 W. Randolph , 16-100
Chicago , IL 60601
Phone: 312-814-2121

 

EMAIL TEMPLATE: http://www.illinois.gov/gov/ contactthegovernor.cfm

Bastard Nation: the Adoptee Rights Organization
P.O. Box 1469 | Edmond , OK 73083-1469 | Phone / Fax: 415-704-3166
www.bastards.org
bn@bastards.org

~ ~ ~ posted for Bastard Nation by Site administrator Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

Much has been written about the now-worldwide phenomenon of predatory pedophile Catholic priests who molested young boys, but it is important to note that priests also molested young girls and older teens. These girls and young women (how many?) were also impregnated by these priests.

A recent NPR audio caught my ear on Tuesday, April 20, 2010’s Morning Edition: “Priest’s Dual Legacy: Transgressions And Money”. The transcript can be found here: http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=126116570

NPR hosts Steve Inskeep and Renee Montagne use these statements to introduce the story:

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

Father Marcial Maciel built the conservative Legion of Christ into a
powerful Catholic order. Over several decades, Maciel raised millions of dollars for the church. Some estimate the order’s assets are worth $20 billion. After Maciel died in 2008, his order revealed that he had fathered a daughter. Others have come forward claiming to be his sons.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

There were years of allegations ignored by the Vatican that Father Maciel sexually abused seminarians as young as 12. Our next guest has reported that Father Maciel hid his secret life by buying the protection of key Vatican officials.

The fact that Father Marcial Maciel fathered children does not seem to be an issue; discussion of the money and assets followed. The adult children get an “honorable mention”, but the mothers of these children get NO mention at all. The story focuses on the MONEY but is missing crucial details.

While this story focuses on just one priest, it raises the as-yet-not-publicly-addressed topic of what happened to the children of these predatory priests? What happened to the mothers of these priests’ children?

I’ve recently been told by a friend, Mary L. Foess (Bonding By Blood, Unlimited) that this a major reason why The Catholic Church and its organizations oppose the opening of birth and adoption records to adoptees. This makes sense, but is not addressed by main stream media — not even NPR.

Mary adds:

The main reason which I believe is responsible for lobbies for adoption agency, owned by Catholic Church organizations, ones which keep blocking the release of original birth certificates to persons formerly adopted as children, is this: Once the mother is found by this adult who was adopted,  she will then tell her adult ‘child’ who his/her father is. This may lead straight to the priest. There are adoption agencies funded by Catholic church sources; they have powerful lobbies. The Associations for Lawyers, too, block these bills, too, by opposing them when they speak in committee meetings (public hearings). Some birthdads, too, are ‘married men’ who had an affair with these birth mothers.

The Catholic Church’s opposition to unsealing birth and adoption records to adoptees is based upon the unspoken and unacknowledged problem that many, possibly thousands, of priests are indeed fathers — and not just “men of the cloth” religious fathers. The Church wants to keep under wraps the identities of priests who sired out-of-wedlock babies.

For the girls and young women involved, the cover-up means that they remained silent for decades because they conceived outside of marriage. The shame of conceiving through the rape of a priest is even more horrifying. These girls and young women were, of course, forced into relinquishing their illegitimate children, sentencing both the mothers and their adopted-out offspring into lifetimes of shame, degradation and guilt.

But that shame, guilt and degradation doesn’t belong on the young mothers and their children. Let’s put the shame and blame where it belongs: on the not-married fathers — priests — who, not only molested children, but broke their vows of celibacy, destroyed trust, mocked their vocational priesthood and took away the innocence of thousands of children, and their own children.

A very long time ago, I watched the romantic movie series The Thornbirds, about a priest and his love for a woman. Romantic and melancholy, this story tugged at my heart. That was when I was much younger than what I am now. Now, decades later, the thought turns my stomach. Not because I don’t think priests ought to be married, but because if marriage were allowed, perhaps some of the sexual problems of priests might be solved.

We have real-live adoptees who want their birth certificates unsealed, who want their adoption records unsealed, and who want to know who is responsible for giving them life. Because the Catholic lobby is so strongly opposed to opening these records, these adoptees will never know the truth. Correction, these specific adoptees — and millions of other adoptees not produced by predatory pedophile priests — are forced to live life not knowing the truth of their births because protecting the identities of these flaky fathers is more important than fessing-up, telling the truth, admitting to the sins committed and going about the business of rectifying the wrongs. Opening birth and adoption records would help millions of adoptees answer their questions of personal identity, but the Catholic Church says no.

Perhaps the reason the world has not heard about this issue is because The Catholic Church cannot cope with more public scrutiny.

I want to know why more Senior Mothers, and perhaps younger women who were impregnated by priests, do not step forward. The shame is not on you, the shame belongs on the perpetrator. Your adult children need you to step forward and step up to the plate to rally with adoptees to open birth and adoption records. Let’s start naming names of the priests who first committed the rapes, and then causing pregnancies, and who then forced the relinquishment of thousands of their own children.

Father Marcial Maciel of the conservative Legion of Christ is not the only priest to have fathered out-of-celibacy and out-of-wedlock illegitimate children. Who are the others?

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

~ ~ ~

By coincidence, the following was sent via Adoption News Service about the fight for open records in New Jersey where adoptees are being held back by the Catholic Conference:

http://www.northjersey.com/news/opinions/91678409_The_Record__Letters__April_21__2010.html?c=y&page=2

At adoption standoff’s center

Regarding Contributing Editor James Ahearn’s “Battle to open adoption records” (Opinion, Page O-2, April 18):

The true battle is the adoption community (to include birth mothers) against the Catholic Church.

Ahearn has written on priestly abuses in the past, so it is especially frustrating that he did not make the connection that the church wants secrecy in adoption to protect clerics who are, well, fathers.

Ahearn goes on to say that there are Democrats and Republicans on each side. Really? That’s funny. In the state Senate, only one Democrat voted against the bill to give adult adoptees access to their birth certificates and family medical histories of their birth parents.

The adoption community longs for a brave editor or reporter who might think it a bit funny that the Catholic Church is advocating for secrecy over transparency.

Peter W. Franklin

Haskell, April 19

The writer is associated with the Web site AdopteesWithOutLiberty.com.

http://adopteeswithoutliberty.com/

In gathering up information the other day I went to look up an important article. I had copied into my files when it was first published. I  needed it now to refer someone to it online, but it was gone. The website had taken it offline. This is one of the most helpful legal articles about adoption, but, like our sealed birth and adoption records, it cannot be accessed. I know of no other place this article was published. I cannot communicate with the author, so, I’m re-publishing it here. If the author does not want me to publish it, he is invited to contact me and I will remove it. However, this piece is vitally important to adoption reform and must be available for researchers. I hope it will remain online here. The author does not have a website. The link below is listed, but it is defunct; the article is not there.

http://www.njesq.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=173:20090518-adoption&catid=6:this-issue&Itemid=17

Due process in adoption? Hardly  

Mon May 18, 2009 by William H. Mild III

Adoption is generally perceived as a positive thing — hope, love and new beginnings. We prefer not to dwell on the negatives that usually precede an adoption — anguish, anger and severing of family ties. The purpose of this piece is to look at the due process implications of making a child available to be adopted. I am not addressing the process whereby the New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services may obtain involuntary termination of parental rights because of abuse, neglect and/or other parental unfitness. Although some of the concerns expressed herein are also applicable to intra-family adoptions and approved agency placements, this piece will focus on the adoption process arising out of non-agency placements with potential adoptive parents who are not part of the child’s original family, commonly referred to as private placements or private adoptions.

 The parent-child relationship has long been recognized as a fundamental interest in which parent and child are each protected by the due process requirements of access to counsel, notice and a higher burden of proof — clear and convincing, rather than mere preponderance. For instance, see In re Gault, 387 U.S. 1 (1966); Crist v. NJDYFS, 135 N.J. Super. 573 (App. Div. 1975); NJDYFS v. Wandell, 382 A.2d 711 (J.& D.R. Ct. 1978); Santosky v. Kramer, 455 U.S. 745 (1982).

 As a custody or termination proceeding inevitably affects fundamental interests of both parent and child, both are indispensable parties, Bruno v. Mark MaGrann Associates, 909 A.2d 768 (App. Div. 2006). Because contact with other family members can also be important, grandparents and siblings have been granted a limited statutory right to apply for visitation, N.J.S.A. 9:2-7.1.

Private adoptions are almost always based upon the voluntary relinquishment of birthparents and their consent to an adoption. Relinquishment is a difficult, emotion-laden process for birthparents. Many relinquishing parents are unmarried and in their teens and early 20s. Many are immature, naïve, depressed and economically dependent upon their own parents for physical necessities and guidance. Parents of birthparents often feel acute embarrassment at an out-of-wedlock pregnancy and push birthparents toward relinquishment. Other relatives, clergy, teachers and family friends may convince a vulnerable birthparent that the child will be “better off” with an adoptive family with “more to offer”. Suggested reading is Ann Fessler’s The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades Before Roe v. Wade. Very few relinquishments are “voluntary” in any cheerful sense.

To be valid, a surrender document cannot be signed by a birthparent before the birth of the child or within 72 hours of the birth. It is the rare birthparent who can afford access to independent legal counsel in a private adoption. Only the adoptive parents have an attorney and it is their attorney who prepares all the documents. The formal surrender document may contain waivers of counseling, legal representation and/or further notice concerning the adoption proceeding. The adoptive parents’ attorney will probably give the birthparent(s) a Notice of Intention to Place which formally advises the birthparent(s) that they will receive no further notice of subsequent proceedings and will have no right to object to the adoption unless he/she files a written objection with the Surrogate of the county within 20 days, or 35 days if a nonresident. The Notice of Intention to Place process relies entirely upon the integrity of the adoptive parents’ attorney and offers an opportunity for fraud, if the particular attorney is so inclined and especially if the birth parent(s)or the adoptive parents reside outside of New Jersey. The Notice of Intention to Place becomes the basis of what is essentially a default judgment of adoption. The attorney represents only the adoptive parents, not the birthparent(s) or the child at a time when independent legal counsel is urgently needed.

However well-intentioned, the adoptive parents’ attorney who explains legal documents to a birthparent has an inherent conflict of interest. Regardless, the birthparent(s) is/are typically dependent upon the adoptive parents’ attorney to explain the documents’ contents and answer any legal questions.

Birthparents, like the public at large, generally understand that they are surrendering a child to be adopted and raised within a substitute family without interference. They do not realize, however, that they are de facto, as the child’s legal guardian, also surrendering the child’s right to know and be part of his or her original family.

They do not understand that their signature will, following completion of the adoption, lead to the permanent sealing of their child’s original birth certificate, well beyond the scope of their parental rights, which normally “expire” when the child becomes an adult. The child’s adoption record, including the child’s original birth certificate, will remain sealed against the child for the rest of his or her life, unless he or she can sustain the burden of proving to a court that there is “good cause.” As “good cause” is not defined, the outcome will likely depend upon the personal predilections of the judge. See Backes v. Catholic Family & Community Services, 509 A.2d 283 (Ch. Div. 1985), which denied access to sealed medical or genetic information because the adult adoptee’s mental condition was deemed insufficiently pathological.

Unless the adoptee is later able to learn his biological identity by some other means, the long-term effect of relinquishment is to strip the adopted person of his or her natural identity, including their genetic and medical background and their family and ethnic heritage, for their entire lifetime. None of this is explained in the surrender documents the birthparent(s) are given to sign. Indeed, the attorney for the adoptive parents has no reason or obligation to explain it.

The right to obtain a copy of one’s own birth certificate is routinely exercised by all citizens, unless you were adopted. Although parent-child relationships are supposed to be fundamental and constitutionally protected, children’s relationships with their parents, grandparents, siblings and other family members are routinely and permanently severed, first, by the inadvertent effect of the unrepresented birthparent(s)’ signature on surrender documents and, second, by a court’s judgment of adoption. The child has no guardian ad litem, attorney or other qualified person to represent and protect his or her interests and the adoption statute does not require it.

In fact, the only time the adoption statute requires the appointment of a guardian ad litem in a private adoption is if the court-appointed agency recommends a child be removed from the home of the proposed adoptive parents, N.J.S.A. 9:3-48a(2)(c). Apparently, our legislature sees no need for a guardian ad litem beforea private placement is made.

After the surrender papers are signed, the child is placed with the adoptive parents who are required to file a Complaint for Adoption within 45 days of receipt of the child, according to N.J.S.A. 9:3-44. Neither the complaint nor any notice thereof is served upon the birthparent(s) if they were given a Notice of Intention to Place and failed to file a written objection. Upon the filing of the complaint, the court is required to fix a date for a preliminary hearing and to appoint an approved agency to investigate and submit a written report. This presents the agency with a bit of a fait accompli because, by this time, the child has been in the adoptive home approximately 45 days.

At the preliminary hearing, assuming the agency report is favorable to the adoptive parents, the court terminates the birthparent(s)’ parental rights, schedules a final hearing and appoints an approved agency to supervise and evaluate the continuing placement of the child. If the final report of the approved agency recommends that the adoption be granted and the court is satisfied that the best interests of the child will be served thereby, the court may dispense with the final hearing and enter a judgment of adoption immediately.

It seems to me that a significant number of New Jersey adoptions, particularly private adoptions, are on shaky legal ground. A court’s termination of parental rights based primarily upon the Notice of Intention to Place and the report of the approved agency is considerably weaker than the “clear and convincing evidence” required to pass constitutional muster. Birthparents should not have been expected to navigate these labyrinthine statutes without independent counsel.

Without counsel, birthparents have virtually no way of knowing the long-term effect of their relinquishment and the post-adoption sealing of the court’s file, including the child’s original birth certificate, pursuant to N.J.S.A. 9:3-52.

The child is an indispensable party and requires independent counsel to protect his or her own fundamental rights and interests — including adult rights and interests — from being needlessly compromised.

Due process in adoption? Hardly.

William H. Mild III served for 23 years as a deputy attorney general within the New Jersey Division of Law representing the Division of Youth and Family Services in numerous guardianship and civil child abuse/neglect cases. He retired from the Division of Law in 1999.

~ ~ ~ posted by Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

I had to fill out yet another government form today:

“I am the individual to whom the information/record applies or that person’s parent (if a minor) or legal guardian. I know that if I make any misrepresentation which I know is false to obtain information from Social Security records, I could be punished by a fine, imprisonment or both.”

Each time an adoptee fills out a form that requires “name, date and place of birth” that adoptee is either knowingly or unknowingly lying. Adoptees are forced to lie by the very nature and status of our known and unknown identities. All adoptees have a legal identity that is different from their identity at birth. And, officially, our adoptions are not acknowledged as part of our identity.

I rush through the data, seething inside:

Name: Joan Mary Wheeler

Date of Birth: 1-7-1956

That is my legal identity. But I was not born with that name. In fact, Joan Wheeler did not legally exist until one year and one month AFTER my date of birth. Joan Wheeler was adopted not born. To be accurate and truthful: I was born to a mother who is not my legal mother and no paperwork exists — legally — to prove my birth. So I am forced to lie whenever I write my name and date of birth. To be accurate I should write the following on all forms:

Name: Doris M Sippel

Date of Birth: 1-7-1956

Date of Finalization of Adoption: 1-14-1957

Date of legal name change: 1-14-1957

Date of sealing and falsification of birth record: somewhere between 1-14-1957 and March 1957.

Date adoptive parents received new, amended and falsified birth record for Doris Sippel/Joan Wheeler: March 1957

So, when I see these words on government forms: “I know that if I make any misrepresentation which I know is false… I could be punished by a fine, imprisonment or both”, I take that as a threat to me by my government. Each and every time I am forced to write my name and date of birth, I know I have to write the accepted version of truth for simplicity’s sake. I am, however, forced to live lies perpetrated by my city, state and federal governments.

The ones guilty of fraud and perjury (misrepresentation of material facts; false statements of facts) are: the Surrogate Court Judge who signed my Final Order of Adoption; The Registrar of Vital Statistics of Buffalo, New York; New York State Department of Health; and the US Federal Government for lack of clarity and standardization of birth and adoption records.

The United States of America needs a federal mandate to correct these inconsistencies for all domestic and foreign-born adoptees.

Join in the fight to change our laws by clicking on these links: Equal Access for Adult Adoptees: http://www.change.org/petitions/view/equal_access_for_adult_adoptees (a Petition to the President of the United States and the US House of Representatives);  Letter to President Obama at Family Preservation: http://familypreservation.blogspot.com/2010/01/call-for-signatures.html; Adoptees: Fight for the right to your own identity in Illinois! http://www.change.org/petitions/view/adoptees_fight_for_the_right_to_your_own_identity_in_illinois; Restore Adult Adoptee Access to Original Birth Certificates http://www.change.org/petitions/view/restore_adult_adoptee_access_to_original_birth_certificates.

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

THIS MESSAGE MAY BE FORWARDED FREELY.

HB 1978 pending in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives is an unrestricted bill that would allow adopted adults born in Pennsylvania to obtain a copy of their original birth certificate.

If you have an adoption connection to Pennsylvania or are a resident of Pennsylvania – and you support this legislation – please send your name, address and email to choard@comcast.net so that you can be added to our database.  As the bill progresses, we will keep you updated.

Carolyn Hoard

West Grove, PA

www.americanadoptioncongress.org

~ ~ ~ posted by legitimatebastard for Carolyn Hoard of the American Adoption Congress.

~ ~ ~ Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009. Book Sales Link

This Idea for Change in America: Return Adult Adoptees the right to their Original Birth Certificates, is now down to 13th place. We need to be in the Top 10 for this Idea to be presented to President Obama and his administration. We have until Friday March 12th at 5pm to vote.

Click the link below to VOTE YES and to read the discussion comments.
http://www.change.org/ideas/view/return_adult_adoptees_the_right_to_their_original_birth_certificates
Even if you live in a foreign country, please vote for American adoptees to have the right to receive a Certified copy of their Original Birth Certificate! I know my readership is worldwide, so come on folks! All it takes is a personal conviction that adoptees deserve the same civil rights as non-adopted people do! Vote today! Many countries worldwide have what we need in America!

Thank You!

Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

There’s an incredible discussion about Cully Ray’s and Mara Rigge’s Idea for Change in America at the change.org website:

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/return_adult_adoptees_the_right_to_their_original_birth_certificates

Go there to vote in favor of true Open Records for Adoptees. Read the comments and add your own!

My last comment there was this:

If you doubt just how deeply Christian thought is entrenched in adoption, a close look at the Missionaries from Idaho in Haiti, is in order. Just a few adoptees’ blogs will indicate the destruction done by Christian adoptors of orphans:  

http://www.babylovechild.org/2010/03/02/laura-silsbys-pipedreams-of-a-future-in-the-child-containment-industry/

http://bastardette.blogspot.com/2010/03/waitng-for-god-silsby-still-waiting.html

http://bastardette.blogspot.com/2010/03/more-trouble-for-laura-silsby-dumped-by.html

Keep this in mind: the law behind the present system of documenting births and adoptions for adoptees in America was begun in 1930 under the guise of “protecting” illegitimate children from learning embarrassing facts about how they came to be, therefore, the justification for making “new” birth certificates for adoptees was the idea of lifting them up from the status of a less-valued birth to that of being adopted “anew”. 

I must be the only ORPHAN to speak out because I have yet to hear any other HALF OR FULL ORPHAN born of married parents to oppose being held in this category. Please understand, I do not say this as a weapon against my fellow adoptees who are of unmarried parents. 

This is a degrading system of recording births and adoption based purely upon the moral judgment of the Registrars who wrote this law in 1930. I do not like being categorized into something I am not. My fellow adoptees shouldn’t be in this socially-constructed trap, either. We have been humiliated by these horrendous society judgments far too long. Lift us up and into a free society. Give us back our dignity and civil rights to our real birth certificates.

And for god’s sake, stop religious fanatics from adopting children. To missionaries like Laura Silsby, children are adoptable only because they (the missionaries and other religious fanatic adoptors) think that they are doing “god’s work”. The end result (not going into all the other issues in adoption here) is that all orphans (half and full, and even the ones who are not orphans at all) will suffer the same fate as their illegitimate counterparts in adoption: their birth certificates will be sealed and a new falsified one will be issued.

Asking for Access to our sealed Original Birth Certificates, alone, is not enough to break the cycle and change public view of adoptees. We must break this cycle and promote an end to the humiliating process of incorrectly documenting adoptees’ births and adoptions by sealed and falsified birth certificates. Demand an Adoption Certificate to replace Falsified Birth Certificates.

Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

Keep your votes coming in! By clicking on this link: http://www.change.org/ideas/view/return_adult_adoptees_the_right_to_their_original_birth_certificates

your vote will help secure civil rights of American adoptees to the truth of our births! Be sure to read all the comments and add your own. Now is the time to be heard!

Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.

Why should a child have his or her lineage falsified? Falsifying a birth certificate for two gay men is to pretend that they can give birth! The same applies to two women! Common sense tells us that a child is created by a man and a woman. To record fictional birth records is to falsify a child’s life, lineage, and facts of birth.

In a similar train of thought, a state legislator, Democrat Henry Heller of Maryland, says it’s time to ban marriages between first cousins and stop playing what he calls “genetic roulette’ with their offspring. He wants to bring Maryland ‘into the world of enlightened world of other states such as West Virginia, Arkansas, and most others which already prohibit unions of first cousins. Heller says couples who are first cousins are at an increased risk of having a child with birth defects.

Yet, in most states, and some Canadian provinces, adoption records and the original birth certificates of persons who have had their adoption finalized in that state,  Washington, D.C., or province, are sealed by that jurisdiction and, hence, are unavailable to ’said’ person whose name is on this document. This adds a unique definition to an adopted person’s hereditary: their genes must be magic! Their DNA can, mysteriously, avoid pooling with a kinfolk’s DNA, ever, to produce an offspring with undesirable traits. Otherwise, why wouldn’t their original birth certificate be available?

This is pure hogwash! But it does reveal one thing:  We adoptees are defined, by law, to have a different place in a biological definition of what it human. We are segregated as a totally different sub-species, one whose genes are pure and/or never produce bad traits in our babies. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if we marry a first cousin, or a relative to a closer degree….

THIS IS DISCRIMINATION!  Are we 1/16th human? Remember that during the slavery times, a person who had African-American heritage would still be defined as “Negro”, even if he/she had only 1/16th amount of blood from his/her African tribe?

 Mary L. Foess

Bonding by Blood, Unlimited, founder & president, since 1988

Vassar, MI

e-mail:  mlfoess@Gmail.com

Web site: http://www.ArmenianAncestryBook.com

Facebook page: accessible by typing in ‘Mary Foess’ or using the above e-mail address

I’m not going to get into a huge discussion on gays rights as that is not the focus of this website.

If two people are committed to each other and love each other, then they should be allowed to marry and adopt if that is their choice. Having said that, I must also say, because there are serious problems with the American system, adoption is not the best choice for the child. Guardianship, and not adoption, should take precedence for the child’s welfare, not the parents who “want” a child. Fiddling around with reproductive technologies, surrogate mothers, donated eggs and sperm, all confuse just whose egg and sperm and womb created the child. In the case of many parents who had a part in giving a child life, all of those parents names belong on a birth certificate. Adoptive parents names belong on an adoption certificate. Period.

These points are discussed in detail in  my book and in this website.

In my blog post two nights ago on the article “5th Circuit Appeal: Court Upholds Child’s right to Both Fathers on Birth Certificate” http://lezgetreal.com/?p=26855, a commenter had this to say following their article:

 Melanie Nathan

Posted on February 22, 2010 at 12:43 pm

The truth is that all adoptive parents get to go on an amended birth certificate and same should apply straight or gay

Well, that may all be well and good, IF that is your goal is. Having the same rights to nullify the personhood of an innocent child for the benefit of raising the legal equality standards for an oppressed group (gay men and lesbians), is just wrong. It is the wrong goal. The goals gays and lesbians want is to be able to adopt, not to be told they cannot adopt. In that process of fighting to win the equal right to adopt, gay and lesbian pre-adoptive parents lose sight of the most important person in this equation: the adoptee.

 Another commenter at the above linked article had this to say:

Chloe

Posted on February 22, 2010 at 9:22 am

Accurate birth certificate?

An accurate birth certificate should state who actually gave birth to the child. The child became a second class citizen the minute his original birth certificate was replaced by the first falsified document.

This is not a gay rights issue. This is an adoptee rights issue. Falsifying birth certificates in the name of adoption is legalized identity theft. This child should be entitled to his true identity just as non-adopted citizens are.

Winning the right to adopt as two single men in a committed relationship is not a victory for gay rights, it is a stunning defeat for human rights, and a devastating defeat for adoptees and our natural parents. We, in the adoption reform movement, have been fighting since 1953 for the right to access our sealed birth certificates and sealed adoption records. In my opinion, we have been terribly short-sighted in our focus. We should also be fighting to PREVENT the sealing and falsification of more birth certificates by demanding an end to sealed birth certificates and the automatic falsification of a “new” birth certificate for every child who is adopted, whether the adopting parents are gay, lesbian, or straight.

I have written about this extensively on this blog, and in my book by the same name as this website. I must be writing to the blind and talking to deaf ears and trying to reason with irrational people. How hard is it to accept the facts of life? One mother and one father get together and one sperm meets one egg and there you have a baby! Throw in a surrogate mother and an egg donor and you have one genetic mother, one rented womb mother, and one sperm donor father. Is that explained clearly enough? Now, class, whose names belong on a factual Certificate of Live Birth? That’s right: the father whose sperm fertilized the mother’s egg and the mother who subsequently gave birth! That’s three parents! The fourth parent who wants to adopt must be named on an adoption certificate because no adoptive parent physically creates an adopted son or daughter. You cannot fabricate the facts of life.

Isn’t that a simple that concept?

But we have been doing just that and that is why the gay community sees this as a victory for their right to adopt.

Who the parents are gets muddied when a new set of parents come along and wants to take over parenting that child. This is why GUARDIANSHIP is much safer for the child: because in Guardianship, the child does not have a replacement set of parents. In Guardianship, the child’s rights to one mother and one father are protected. In Guardianship, the parent-figures have the legal role of care-taker, but they are not taking the place of the child’s true parents. Adoption makes the child’s true parents disappear. Adoption creates a new Certificate of Live Birth for the child and changes the child’s name to suit the purposes of the mother and father who adopt the child. But in the case of two lesbians or two gay men, the two parents who take on the social parenting role want the right to put their names on a new Certificate of Live Birth for the child. That is revisonist history.

The right to adopt should not be confused with the right to be a couple and take on a parenting role.  Adoption, as is practiced in this country, is a biased and unequal legal system with the adopting parents (gay or straight) having the upper hand. Gays and lesbians gaining the legal right to adopt is just one more step in the process of taking away a child’s right to the full truth of who created that child: one mother and one father gave that child life.

I get so tired of explaining this that I actually get tongue-tied.

So I’ll leave that alone for now.

Another commenter on the above article made this correction:

Daryl Royal

Posted on February 23, 2010 at 12:14 pm

Without taking anything away from the rest of the discussion, this decision is NOT from the U.S. Supreme Court, but is instead from the Fifth Circuit, which is a federal appeals court one step below the Supreme Court. It is only binding precedent for courts in that circuit, which include some or all of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

I stand corrected. So this is not a US Supreme Court ruling. None the less, this is certainly much more attention and “victory” than adoptee-rights legislation has received.

The adoption reform movement needs to stand up and take notice. Oppose such rulings as this! For what appears to be a victory for one oppressed group (the Gay Community) is actually a huge setback for the Adoption-Rights community.

Please, people, wake up! Each and every one of us has one mother and one father, and adoptees have another set of parents who should be named on a Certificate of Adoption, not a fraudulent birth certificate. Stand up and fight for what is right and just!

The United Nations, through UNICEF, has the goal of all children around the world to the right to a Universal Birth Registation and Birth Certificate.

I say we need to EXPAND that idea to include a UNIVERSAL Adoption Certificate. State the facts plane and simple. Put the truth right out there and stop playing with adoptees’ lives.

I still say that a full United States Constitutional Amendment should be made to overturn the Model  State Adoption Act AND this stupid, stupid case involving brain dead numbnuts gay men who can’t see the obvious crime they have just committed against the very child they claim they love so much. If they loved that boy, they would respect WHO he is and WHO his real parents are and not lie on a birth certificate! They would also insist on an accurate Certificate of Adoption to tell the absolute truth of who is the adoptive parent. The birth certificate should tell the truth of who are the biological, life-giving parents.

Gays and lesbians, go back into the corner. You can come back out only when you can recognize and honor the facts of life for another human being.

Joan M Wheeler, BA, BSW, author of Forbidden Family: A Half Orphan’s Account of Her Adoption, Reunion and Social Activism, Trafford Publishing, Nov 2009.