Bastard Nation
The Adoptee Rights Organization

January 1, 2005
STATEMENT BY MARLEY ELIZABETH GREINER,
EXE. CHAIR BASTARD NATION

HONK IF YOU'RE MY DADDY!

Adoptees, Abductees, Bastards, Permanent Adult Children of Adoption, First Parents, Natural Parents, Birth Parents, Exiled Parents, Adoptive Prenatural Parents, Sperminators, Roving Inseminators, and Family Members-Bastard Nation welcomes you to Honk If You're My Daddy! -where activism meets popular culture.

I'm sorry I can't be here with you today, but by the time this is read I'll be in the Great State of New Hampshire where tomorrow the records of adults born and adopted in that state will be unsealed and the right of identity restored to them. Today, we send you solidarity from New Hampshire.

Much has been written about Who's Your Daddy over the last week or so. "Liberal" reformers, conservative policy makers, and media pundits, without asking any of us what we think, break out in chickenpox at the thought of Trash Television exploiting adoption for fun and profit. They condemn WYD, demand "emergency meetings" with Fox bigwigs, blather about "sensitivity" and hurt feelings, imagining that adopted adults need sheltered-by them--from such disgusting entertainment. The doom and gloomists, most of who have barely lifted a finger, if that, in our battle for open records, and sometime even obstruct us, hysterically condemn WYD as "dangerous," "exploitative." "sickening," revolting," manipulative," "cheap," "traumatic," "voyeuristic," "callous," "abusive," and "perverse," while nearly always failing to note the exploitative, sickening, revolting, manipulative, cheap, traumatic, voyeuristic, callous, abusive and perverse nature of the public policy of adoption secrecy and shame that creates the premise of the show: sealed records.

Those of us who are adopted know that Who's Your Daddy ain't nothin' next to the ultimate reality show: Adoption: Secrets and Lies where everyday normal, tax-paying citizens who just happen to be adopted face down the corrupt adoption system, negotiate a gauntlet of paternalistic and "protective" laws, hypocritical adoption agencies, do-good adoption "experts," bored judges, insensitive bureaucrats, sell-out politicians, adoption trade lobbyists, religious zealots, and snotty records clerks that even the brightest program developers and Fox producers couldn't dream up. What is more perverse? Who's Your Daddy or a public policy that steals identities and locks up the birth records of adopted citizens for "they're own good" and replaces them with forged documents.

§ Do not let the state delegitimate your birth and existence through sealed records!

§ Do not let the government dictate and manipulate your identity and relationships!

§ Do not accept compromise! Oregon, Alabama, and New Hampshire prove that unrestricted access to our own birth records can be won in the legislature and at the ballot box.

Turn the hypocrisy of the Culture of Shame on itself like you are doing here at Fox today. We have just celebrated the New Year. Let us resolve, then, to let the year 2005 be the Year of the Bastard. The Year of the Adoptee. The year that sealed records are exposed for public scrutiny-as you are doing right now--and condemned for lack of all moral and ethical character. Let the year 2005 be the year that adopted persons take back what is ours-our identity, our genealogy, our history, our records. Let 2005 be the year that adoptee voices are heard nationwide, in legislatures, in the newspapers, on television and radio. Take back your rights and your identity. Open records now! It's the right thing to do!

HONK!