Characters Unite Against Adoptees.........Part IV, The Last Straw...

So I am innocently sitting on the couch watching a rerun of a "Monk" Episode I happened to like, eating my Pirate Booty Aged White Cheddar Rice Puffs this past summer when I saw it. The bowl sitting on my lap fell onto the floor soon after...it didn't matter. I was to furious to continue eating anyway...... "I'm an Adoptive Father" (said by a gay character) would echo in my ears and haunt me for the rest of the night, while my soul screamed WELL WHAT ABOUT US?!!!!!!! once again for the millionth time while I tried to fathom, why the HELL a Tv Character had more rights then I did....


Then my anger, after reading the following quote, turned into sardonic laughter........I suppose that is because I am exacerbated. Infuriated. Exhausted and Humiliated. Closed Adoption will do that to ya...

"USA Network has launched CHARACTERS UNITE, a new multimedia platform committed to combating intolerance and promoting acceptance. To make a pledge against intolerance and prejudice go to charactersunite.com"

Yeah........for everyone but bastards.......but why should we be included, when some who fight for equality for themselves benefit further by using us as commodities.......



I agree with this African-American man. The view from the back of the bus DOES suck. So does not having the legal right to be given your own Original Birth Certificate.
Because you weren't born the right way. Which is the emotional equivalent of being treated like dirt because you don't look the right way. Which is equally as ridiculous......
I was in sixth grade when I first heard about it.
"Black Like Me" was making a huge impact not only on alot of white Americans, but on me too. I remember our teacher explaining the reason why this book was written, as he gave us excerpts to read. And why John Howard Griffin was such a phenomenal man. And all the sympathy I had for African-Americans. I could relate. I knew exactly what it felt like to be treated like you weren't good enough. I remember too, a sense of excitement breaking through the numbness that always encased me, which was also a form of shock at the audacity of the situation forced on me and the nerve of being told I could not know my Mother's own name, because the ostracization of the African American people was finally being seen in the right light. That it was wrong.....something I could never discuss with so many adult bigots around me. Something that no one ever discussed enough. The dots would connect in my heart and in an indirect but similar way, I felt that perhaps the pain I felt about Closed Adoption Records and the shame society wanted me to feel because I was born out of wedlock was being recognized as well. For being raised in Closed Adoption is the loneliest feeling in the world....yet forty years later, the same loneliness still constantly stings my 4th chakra........

WHY CAN'T USA CREATE AN ADOPTED CHARACTER? WHY CAN'T AN ACTOR OR ACTRESS REPRESENT US? WHY CAN'T A TV SHOW BE CREATED ABOUT THE OPPRESSION WE FACE? WHY CAN'T SOMEONE SAY "I'M A BASTARD" AND PLEDGE TO STOP INTOLERANCE TOWARDS US?.....

And when will I see "Adopted Like Me" in my Tv listings....
In my wildest dreams I imagine it. A non-Adopted person pretending they are Adopted, trying to renew their drivers' licence and being treated like a terrorist because they have only an Amended Birth Certificate to present...
or calling an Adoption Agency to request a search for their Real Mother and being told they can only meet her or have her name IF she gives her permission for them to see her.........
or sending an Adoption Agency money for unidentifying information, that they are legally entittled to, only to never get it and be refused a refund.......
or to go to Vital Statistics and have a total stranger tell them it is illegal for them to have their own OBC and see their Real Parents names while this person who has nothing to do with them at all and whose bloodline is none of their business, can look at it and know who they are anytime the urge strikes......
or to have an Adoption Agency employee literally laugh at their request to meet their Real Father, followed by a remark that was made to make them feel like they are from Mars...
or in a flashback to their childhood when they were drawing a family tree in grade school and asking the teacher if she will find out who their Real Mother is, so they can do the assignment right and being told, you aren't legally allowed to know who gave birth to you dear.....
And portraying WHAT this feels like. All the hurt. The feelings of inferiority. The shame. The anger at how UNBELIEVABLY UNINTELLIGENT the way we are treated is. And the intense frustration that sours our lives....

Then I read something else, that makes what I am saying even more important. On
another blog, a few days ago.......

Anonymous said...
"When will it be our turn, you ask?
Well, we are the INVISIBLE MINORITY. Our discrimination isn't even acknowledged AS DISCRIMINATION.
When people use "bastard" as a cuss word, they really cannot look around them and know who they are bashing. Some people using this term don't even realize what they are saying. They are slamming a "fiction character", a person without a known father. That's the problem. THE MAJORITY OF OUR SOCIETY STILL BELIEVES THAT THE FATHERLESS ARE LESSER THAN THEM!!!!
I also believe that President Obama has NO IDEA WHAT ADOPTEE RIGHTS IS."
January 30, 2010 10:28 AM
And I have said that many times myself. That calling evildoers a "bastard" is condescending to all of us. A form of prejudice. Discrimination. Categorizing. Hate speech...I wrote two blogs two years ago about this very subject.
I still don't understand the concept of the word bastard however. We DO have Fathers, we wouldn't have been conceived if we didn't. So what moron thought up that theory...probably someone as brain cell strapped as the blockhead who drafted the laws that African-Americans could not go to a white Christian Church, or drink out of the same water fountain or sit in the front of the bus....
The very real truth, "that our discrimination isn't even acknowledged as discrimination" is one reason WHY we must start to push harder. Why we need to call The White House comment line constantly and politely let President Obama know that if this country is to truly execute diversity, WE MUST BE INCLUDED. More E-mails need to be sent to Reps, Senators and Governors. And our stories need to be heard, in person, face to face with those who make our laws. I can not emphasize that enough. Let them see our tears. See the sadness in our eyes. Let them UNDERSTAND by hearing the heartbreak in our voices how the United States is treating us like second class citizens....and that ADOPTIVE PARENTS IN THE NCFA WHO VIE FOR CLOSED ADOPTION RECORDS, HAVE NO RIGHT TO HAVE MORE RIGHTS THAN US, BECAUSE WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS JUST LIKE THEM AND WE NEVER HAVE BEEN, NOR EVER WILL BE LESS THAN THEM......
When I first came into the Adoption community online, a Real Mother wrote to me that "you guys are going to have to shout it from the rooftops". Damn good advice. But until I buy a megaphone and get over my fear of heights, I am not climbing on top of my house anytime soon....of course I know she didn't mean that literally, but we have to be louder, and spend as much time letting Congress and the media know how we feel as we do blogging. Yet I won't undermine what we have done on line. For we have broken the ice. And educated many people. And with the trail of our words we have created a base from which changes can come about and our plights heard. I am glad for the African-American citizens in this country that Martin Luther King's so just and so beautiful words have finally come true. For the wonderful African-American people are free at last......and not a moment too soon......I like to think too, that John Howard Griffin had a little to do with that..at the very least he paved the way for empathy, WHICH IS WHAT WE ADOPTEES DESPERATELY NEED RIGHT NOW, and he will always be a hero to me, along with Rosa Parks, whose spirit is alot like mine. But until tv networks, like USA begin to treat us like we matter as much as the rest of America, there is no rest for the weary, nor will our work be done. After all, NO form of the media has any right, in this age of political correctness to silence our voices and position us to be less important than anyone else....neither does any State Government...and until Adult Adoptees are finally allowed to eat at the grownup table, and The Closed Adoption System is abolished like it should be, and Open Adoption protects Real Mothers and their infants, I will never, EVER, stop asking those responsible for my pain and for the shunning of it,
WHAT ABOUT US?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...........................
and take delicious pleasure in how that question astounds them..........