Illegitimi Non Carborundum

It seems that, of late, there have been more and more cases of persecution of the innocent and those who speak the truth. Three friends go hiking in the Middle Eastern Mountains and are arrested by the Iranians who charge them with espionage. A young woman wants to marry someone of another religion and she is stoned to death. A whistle-blower is fired and persecuted in an attempt to silence him.

And, the far right and the religious fundies are on a tear in this country for no other reason, when you strip away all the rest of the palaver and specious reasonings, than the fact that our President, duly elected, is a mixed race man with features of the African American race. I think they would be just as nasty and irrational if the chief executive were a woman with liberal leanings. The Old Boys Club took a  beating and they are pulling out all the stops and using the ignorant and bigoted in their campaign. Their campaign has been so successful that a full 20% or more of our population now believe that Mr. Obama is a non-American-born Muslim. This, as we all know (or I hope we do) is slanderous Poppycock and the usual scare tactics that target the less astute citizens of our nation.

Now, we also have anti-choice zealots bemoaning the fact that adoption referrals from Planned Parenthood are decreasing. The number of infants surrendered by single mothers is also decreasing and the Industry and its backers are perturbed to the point that they are doing all in their power to persuade young women to "make an adoption plan(yuck)" and "place" their newborns with a "deserving couple." The message here is that the mother who dares to become pregnant while, single, poor or not having completed her education is NOT deserving of her child. It's a subtler and more insidious version of the same old persecution. The idea of a family headed by a single, young, less-than-affluent woman seems to really scare the bejeesus out of the Good Old Boys.

Along with the tea parties, Palinist goofball rhetoric and other such right-wing nonsense, we are now seeing an upswing in the attacks online and in the general media against adoption reform, open records and those investigating questionable adoption practices and the overzealous actions of the various state Child Services and Social Service agencies. The agencies, including the church-affiliated agencies, are pulling out all the stops and even haunting the adoption forums online to press their agendas.

This can, at times, really get me down. But I have adopted a new slogan, one that was used by General "Vinegar" Joe Stillwell in the Latin, "Illegitimi Non Corborundum," and used as a theme for a popular song by the Toasters, "Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down." I have spent most of my adult life with opinions that were less than popular or politically correct as in "ain't adoption sweeeeet?" I have learned to hold fast to what I know to be true and understand that the more someone fights to change my views, the more they must feel threatened by them.

Well, to our adult children and my sister mothers, congratulations. They are lining us up in their sights and hauling out the big ammo. Adoption reformers and anti-adoption activists are the target du jour. They are afraid of those of us who are Senior Mothers because there was a lot of paperwork flim-flamming going on back then and the agencies, private, church-run and state-run, want to cover their precious behinds. That is also why they are trotting out an unprovable adoption myth, that of the non-existent guarantee of anonymity for the surrendering mother, to deny adult adopted people the right to their original birth certificates. We already know many, many reunited mothers and adult children who have discovered the lies of their surrender. That must really bother the ones who perpetrated those lies.

We have many, many mothers who don't remember ever signing a surrender document. We find that our children, whom we were promised would be swiftly taken to their adoptive homes, often were kept for months in foster care, without the knowledge of the mother, so that the officials could declare them abandoned. That nasty word is even in a lot of the paperwork. The bitch of this is that, had I known the time frame I had to change my mind and that my children were in foster care, believe me I would have done all I could do to get them back. The social workers of that day knew that, hence the prevarication. With reunions and the campaigns for open records, the secrets and the lies are circling around to the hindquarters of the social workers and agencies, trying to line up a good bite.

So, along with the decision I have made to refuse to allow these conscienceless bastards to grind me down, comes the satisfaction of another truism...what goes around, comes around. Karma is staring the Adoption Industry in the face and Karma can be a real bitch.

There's a little bit of hope for the good guys, yet.