The Adoption Journey: Adoption is an Act of Obedience

To celebrate National Adoption Awareness Month, Bethany Christian Services, Lifesong for Orphans  ("Bringing Joy and Purpose to Orphans"), and Lifeline Children's Services.have unselfishly launched a new webpage, The Adoption Journey Project. a resource for couples "starting to think about adoption" aka reeling in more fish.

The November 30, 2011 Adoption Journey Project press release informs us that most adoption agency websites don't post information about adoption  needed by new or thinking-about-it paps.  Who knew?  I've never seen an agency webpage that wasn't full of answers in search of questions.

From  the  Adoption Project press release:

"The vast majority of resources being published by adoption agencies and supporting organizations are for families that are either close to or have committed to the adoption process already," said Marc Andreas, Vice President of Marketing at Bethany Christian Services, the largest adoption agency in the country.


"We recognize that couples just starting to think about adoption have completely different perspectives and needs regarding the discernment process for adoption in their lives.  This project will provide tangible resources to help support them and the beginning of their own adoption journey."

Among these resources is a creepy video under the "For Pastors & Ministry Leaders tab,  featuring Tony Dungy, former head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts (2007 Super Bowl champs ) and his wife Lauren, pimping the "orphan crisis"  generic or branded.  Also there, you'll find a download link for an Orphan Sunday  kit.  Since I doubt Bastard Nation would count as a ministry with these folks, I opted out.. Anyway,  I already know quite a bit about Orphan Sunday,  the "orphan crisis" ande the weepy orphan evangelizing projects operating out of churches and ministries. They hate UNICEF and Save the Children  for  trying to keep families and culture together and  holding children "hostage" in their home country; thus thwarting God's work and the Great Commission. Adoption is their stairway to heaven--a lifelong job of "gospel proclamation"--and without it  they may have to pass out blankets to the homeless or worst yet, mind their own business.

Among Dungy's comments:

...This picture is a vivid reminder of what God has done for us--adopting us into his family.


...God was calling us down this path so  adoption became an act of obedience.

...We won't rest until the orphan crisis has ended.


...We as the church ca be the solution.

...Lauren tells us:

Because our church talked about it, adoption felt natural to Tony and me.

I guess we should be happy their church doesn't talk about arson or abstract expressionism.







 Mr an Mrs. Dungy don't explain why if the orphan crisis is so out of control that Bethany and every other adoption agency in the country continue to create more "orphans" by strip mining perfectly good mothers of their  newborns. Isn't the point to decrease the orphan population, not increase it?

Maybe scarier is the page of adopter testimonials found toward the bottom of the front page. While a couple couples (and its always  het couples-no singles or queers need apply; bi-racial is OK unless you belong to the Gulmare Freewill Baptist Church in Pike County, Kentucky)  are as "normal" as the Bethany family can be, most range from disturbed to the bizarre. See, these people have no agency. God commands and they obey, whether they can afford a kid or have no desire to take a trip to AdoptionLand.. And those who have decided to take the journey, without  asking  God's approval first, are delighted when he high-fives them. Funny about that. God wants us all to adopt and be adopted. .

Meet the Hoffmans.  Reading their story forces the Dear Reader to imagine a team of doctors having a have-at- it with the Mrs: as they discuss "God's fingerprint: on her physical body:"

Our plan was to start our biological family in 2005. But after over a year of trying and failing, we decided to visit the Emory Reproductive Center. After a few tests, we discovered that Laura had a unique fingerprint of God on her physical body: she had one kidney and half a uterus. The doctors, undeterred, kept telling us that “We can still get you pregnant.”

Then there's the Walters who stay overnight in a hospital suite and get prayed over by the hands of fussy staffers.  We're not sure where Baby Ernie's bios get to stay, if they stay at all, since he was born in the back of a van in the hospital parking lot.  Mr and Mrs. Ernie'sParents are too poor to keep him and trying to get the rest of their kids back from Children's Services:

We were shown to a spacious suite and invited to stay overnight. One by one, hospital staff members familiar with Ernie’s birth came by to introduce themselves. “I’m not working today,” a physician said. “I just wanted to meet you.” Each visitor spoke about his or her personal belief and rejoiced with us in God’s faithfulness. A nurse at the end of her shift knocked softly. “Could I pray with you before I leave?” She placed her hands in ours and uttered sweet words of thanksgiving.

There we were in a public hospital savoring the fellowship of believers. How could they know about our faith? It seemed that God was sending His servants to affirm His call upon our lives.

The  Griswalds--sorry, I mean the McCollums-- parade around Hanoi with their acquisition strapped to them: No mention of friendly Vietnamese greetings, though we're sure they got them, just like Clark and Ellen did.

Finally there's the Robinson family gettin' down with adoptitude.  Get thee behind me Satan!

Greg and I have found there is a spiritual war waging with adoptions. When you commit to adopt, just be prepared for battle because Satan does not want these kids in homes. There has always been a battle for the lives of little ones. From parents mindlessly sacrificing their children to Molech (god of the Ammonites) in the Old Testament to the New Testament, you can see the battle for children, and I think we are still battling for the lives of children. And I think the church has to stand up and fight for these little ones. It’s going to be painful, and it’s going to hurt. You’re going to come to the point where there’s nothing in your power that you can do. It’s total reliance on God.

I am sure that if both sets of my parents had been subjected to this crap (my natural mother adopted two kids 10 and 12 years after I was born and my natural father adopted his stepson), they'd  both have cheerfully gone childfree.


Of all the reasons to adopt that I can think of, salvation isn't one of them.  The idea, in fact,  is downright insulting.

Many years ago I knew an LDA who learned he was adopted only when he decided to go into broadcasting, not the family auto parts business.

Why do you think we adopted you?  Here's why.  To take over the business.

The spin from our new breed of evangelical adopters:

Why do you think we adopted you?  Here's why. To get into heaven. .

And how would you feel, if you were an ill-behaved ungrateful bastard who'd taken an axe to their stairway to heaven?

Ohio Right to Life: Thankful for Adoption Yet No Rights for Adoptees

Happy Thanksgiving! If you're one of those who don't feel you have much to be thankful for this year, think again --unless you're in or from Ohio, that is.

Ohio Right to Life wants you to be thankful for adoption!

ORTL, in fact, is so thankful for adoption that it got  together a few of its friends to tell us how thankful they are for it and us--who make their miracle happen.

ORTL  fo decades has been the single greatest impediment to restoring records access to Class Bastard Ohio.

ORTL loves us so much that it wants to protect us from our birth certificates and our rights.

ORTL's  hobby horse trumps the rights of thousands.of Ohio adoptees.

ORTL: "Promoting Life" while screwing adoptees and their families.

A drawing of her family  by Olivia Gonidakis This Thanksgiving, Ohio Right to Life is grateful for the gift of adoption as a loving and life-saving alternative to abortion.  Because November is National Adoption Month, it is important to take time to celebrate the selfless sacrifice of birthmothers and the gift of children. Join us by reading words of thanks from members of the pro-life family who have been adopted or who have chosen to adopt. Have a blessed Thanksgiving, Ohio Right to Life

Secretary of State Jon Husted

"Right now, across the country, I know there are young women agonizing over the decision to have a baby they cannot properly care for or to have an abortion. I want them to know there is another option in adoption. Organizations like Ohio Right to Life can connect women to the services they need to get through the pregnancy and give birth to a child that will be adopted, loved and go on to lead a happy life. I can tell you this first hand because that is my story; I was adopted 44 years ago and I owe all that is good in my life to the woman I barely knew, but who gave me the gift of life."

Mike Gonidakis, Executive Director, Ohio Right to Life

"God's perfect plan for our family was through the blessings of adoption. We are so very thankful for our daughter Olivia as well as the sacrifice and life-saving decision her birthmother made. As a society we must continue to promote adoption and offer compassion and support to both birthmothers who place their child for adoption and families who adopt these wonderful babies."

Darlene Yost, Wife of State Auditor Dave Yost

"The Yost house is a bit chaotic this week in preparation for Thanksgiving. I'm going overboard (Dave says, as usual) for our family gathering.  I get that from my mother. But, not inherited through blood, for you see, I'm adopted. Chosen. As we approach this day where we reflect about what we are thankful for, Mom and Pop are high on that list.  I am who I am because they chose me - and made me their daughter. Their own. It is only recently that I realize how grateful I am to the woman who gave me birth. It occurs to me that she chose for me as well. She chose life. I pray she is as blessed by family as I have been."

The Speicher Family, Pro-Life Supporters

"We are profoundly grateful that God formed our family through the gift of adoption. Our four children are the joy of our life! We hope in some small way that our example will encourage mothers in difficult circumstances to choose life and couples to be open to the blessing of adoption. Happy Thanksgiving!"

Interested in Adoption in Ohio? We are very grateful for all of the assistance provided to families seeking children, and to children seeking families. Learn more about adoption from the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services by clicking HERE. The mission of Ohio Right to Life is to promote and defend the right to life of all innocent human beings, from the time of fertilization until natural death.  To learn more about Ohio Right to Life please visit our website at www.ohiolife.org. Visit our blog at www.ohiolifewire.org.

Adoption v Abortion: Pimping Adoptees for a "Higher Purpose"

I did not intend to write as much as I have about abortion in this month of National Adoption Awareness but the subject just keeps getting in the way.

Abortion is the wild card that pops up in even the best laid plans of reformists and activists. In some weird fit of cognitive dissonance, anti-aborts claim that the  fetus shares the same rights as the already born, but reject the notion that if this sacradotaled fetus is brought to term, born and adopted that it should be treated equal under law once it is secularized. In other words, once the word becomes flesh, it's on its own. 

Adoption and abortion, of course, have little in common, though the increasingly Gospelized adoption industry and the anti-abortion corpos make a seamless fit.  Together they present adoption as a  happy win-win-win solution for the principals involved, when they are actually  manipulating, propagandizing, redeeming and reconstructing these principals for the higher purpose of political pimping.

It's bad enough as is, but  during National Adoption Awareness Month (NAAM), we get a booster shot of happy-dappy juice from the evil twins.

STUDENTS FOR LIFE
Just as NAAM was gearing up, I received a tweet from Students for Life which led me to the group's "Adoption, Another Option" webpage.

Students for Life has been around since the mid-1970s under different names, but became a centralized, brick and mortar organization in 2006 when it located in Arlington, Virginia, hired a professional staff, and started it's "historic Pro-Life Field Program."  According to its website:

Since 2006, Students for Life has helped start over 350 new student pro-life organizations and trained hundreds of previously existing student pro-life groups. Since 2006, the organization has trained over 7,000 pro-lifers at its national conference, weekend training seminars, and one-on-one campus training.

Students for Life is not a student organization, no matter what it says.The president of the Students for Life board is Leonard Leo, the Executive VP of the Federalist Society.  Executive Director Kristan Hawkins worked for the 2004 Bush/Cheney Re-election Campaign and served as a Bush appointee to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. Assistant Director,  Tina Whittingthom, came to Students for Life from Rock for Life (see below).  Her husband is Rock for Life director, Erik Whittington, Go to these links for more information on the board and staff.

Students for Life  posts glowing endorsements from numerous rightest and domionist organizations and individuals,  including some on record as opposing obc access for adoptees:   Phyllis Schafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, and Mary Cunningham Agee, founder of the Nurturing Network, former VP of the NCFA board, and almost (after Bill Pierce's first retirement from NCFA) CEO and president of the National Council for Adoption.

Students for Life, not surprisingly, argues with very little wiggle room that an unplanned college-aged pregnancy (their demographic target) can lead only two ways:  abortion or adoption. Keeping a kid gets little traction with these folks.  They  consider the adopted class, lucky indeed to have not been sucked  scrapped and drained down the sink.

Pro-lifers should rejoice with a person who has been adopted…that person’s very life may have been saved because of adoption!

Students for Life also portrays us as emotional hard asses: (my bold)

Adoptees are some of the strongest people in the world. They not only have to push through the emotional struggle of not knowing their birth parents, but they sometimes look so different from their family that they must overcome the idea that complete strangers know that they came into their family through adoption.

But wait a minute!  Adoptees are forced "to push through the emotional struggle of not knowing their birth parents" because some of Students for Life's  biggest supporters don't think we have a right to know those birth parents and will stop at nothing, including calling adopted people "baby killers" and "homewreckers" to keep our records impounded and sealed. Please explain yourself, Students for Life!

Students for Life also commiserates with adopters who fall under the scrutiny of nosy strangers:

Looks of confusion when the skin of their child is a bit darker than their own, a blondie found among a family of red heads, or a nose that doesn’t quite look like Mom or Dad’s. 
 
To celebrate NAAM, Students for Life suggests several soft tactics to use on college girls who get themselves in trouble. These fun activities include sidewalk chalking, promoting adoption songs (Mary Gauthier need not apply), and showing adoption movies such as ( hold on!)  NCFA favorites Bella, Juno and the classic Penny Serenade.

Adoptee Nina shortly before losing her bedroom

Longtime readers of Bastardette may remember my assessment of the latter film--one of the scariest adoption movies ever made, and nary a head chopped off by a bitter bastard.  After Dear Viewers invest themselves emotionally  in 8 years of adoption drama with Irene Dunn, Cary Grant (in a stellar performance) and  the wonderful Edgar Buchanan as Applejack (an old adoptee),  and a happy ending is finally on the horizon,  Adoptee Nina is struck down by that  mysterious illness of which movie children are prone. Six weeks later, after considering divorce, we find Mom and Dad painting over Nina's room, stripped of all her belongings, to make room for a replacement an older boy--what they really wanted all along anyway. (Newborn adoption wasn't so popular back then). This film would have really messed with my mind if I'd see it when I was Nina's age. No doubt the same people who gripe and whine about Anne of Green Gables love this film.


You can also flyer your campus with  incorrect information about "celebrity adoptees." downloaded from the Students for Life site.   For instance, What do Willie Nelson and Eleanor Roosevelt have in common?"  (Love the High Times graphic!)  Maybe Willie and Eleanor smoked it up at Val-Kill?    No, that's not what they have in common! The "correct" answer is supposed to be  "they're adopted"  But they're not. adopted.  Both were reared by grandparents.  BTW, Eleanor had a kept bastard half brother.

You can see the flyer catalogue here. . If you're going to pimp, do it right.  I'll probably write more about  purposeful celebrity adoptee mis- disinformation later this month..

FEMINISTS FOR LIFE
Feminist for Life, dusts off an old issue of its American Feminist: (Fall-Winter, 2003-2004)-- its Rewarding Motherhood  "family album" issue-- on the joys of motherhood.
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Relinquished moms discuss satisfaction with open adoption;  married moms, some with large families, write of the rewards of rearing 9 children; adopters speak of their struggle and good fortune in acquiring some courageous woman's child; and adoptees thank their heroic mothers for giving them life.  The curious thing about this is that with the exception or one woman, seeking an abortion or actually having one, never seriously crossed the minds of the writers.  The exception:  an abortion due to pregnancy complications.

Celebrity Feminists for Life front woman, actress Patty Heaton tells us "women who experience an unplanned pregnancy also deserve unplanned joy." She challenges her readers to "take up the challenge of sacrificing for these women, too."

I didn't find any mention of sacrificing something to keep women and newborns out of the adoption system, though at least one teenage writer actually manged to do it.

ROCK FOR LIFE
Rock for Life is a "project" of the American Life League, an amicus in Doe v Sundquist. I have written about ALL and its founder Judie Brown here , here.,  here, and here with  a couple  more marginal mentions elsewhere.  Judie is one of those Grundys  haunting the American landscape, that can't stand the thought that somebody somewhere is having sex for non-procreative purposes. D W Griffith would have had fun with her. Brown was particularly aggrieved when Planned Parenthood International sent a shipment of condoms to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.

Rock for Life's mission, according to its webpage, is "promoting human rights for all people, born and preborn, by engaging the culture through music, education and action." Their page includes an endless list of "pro-life bands" that, with the exception of Skillet,  no one has ever heard of unless they listen to Radio U. Maybe.

The folks at Rock for Life are so convinced that adoption saves lives, though no one says how they know this, that it offers this attractive lime green Adoption Saves Lives hoodie  for only  $35.00.

Rock for Life, in fact, has a busy t-shirt ministry.

Gloming on Steve Jobs death, Rock for Life director Erik Whittington profers his opinion:

What if Steve Jobs was conceived today?  Since his parents weren’t married and both attending college there is a much higher chance he would have been aborted.  Could his mother of withstood the pressure from her friends, her classmates and her family members to abort?  Would she of withstood the pressure of a Planned Parenthood abortion salesperson telling her pregnancy is just a blob of tissue & abortion is harmless?  Many college mothers these days choose abortion over life for their child.  The abortion rate for college aged mothers is astronomical.  I would easily bet my iPhone4 that if Steve Jobs would have been conceived today he most likely would have been aborted...


...Adoption is powerful!  Without the willingness of his mother to place her son in an adoptive home AND for Steve’s adoptive parents to take him as one of their own who knows how the world would be today.  Would we have Apple, Inc.?  What would we do without our Macbooks, iPhones, iPads, iTunes, etc., etc.?

A Rock for Life video features Chris, 15,  who breaks my heart with the bill of BS he's been sold by his adoptive parents who claim his adoption was finalized two weeks before he was scheduled to be aborted! This may be the saddest adoption video I've ever seen.We're here for you Chris!

   
For some reason, many adoption reformists show little interest in getting to know the enemy. .I was surprised no long ago when someone tried to tell me that the abortion v adoption issue was dead.  I can't remember who said it, but she must have been a liberal.  Abortion v adoption is very much alive, and any adoptee rights activist--no matter what his/her beliefs are about abortion (some oppose it) had better know the territory in to which they are walking. God may not make mistakes, but it's up to people like Students for life, Patty Heaton, and Rock for Life to make sure the babies from the wrong tummies end up in the right families.  If you think any different, then you're just a whiner...or worse.

It is absurd, of course, that in the second decade of the 21st century Class Bastard has to spend valuable time debunking adoption myths and defending our right to our own birth records.  Tonight, for instance, I'm engaged in a "discussion" on the Conservative News Network cite regarding records access  I've been told off. but good!   hrumpf!  The restoration of adoptee rights is a "justification for killing babies."

I remember when Pat Robertson pulled that one 15 years ago when Sundquist was running in Tennessee.  It didn't get him very far.

This is from a paper I presented at the American Adoption Congress annual meeting in 1997 and again at the Bastard Nation conference in 2002.  I thought about paraphrasing it, but I think it needs to be quoted in full:

  In the July 2, 1996 edition of The 700 Club, Jay Sekulow, playing to Robertson's bumpkin straight man, contended that the abortion rate would rise in relation to the rate of adoption records made available to adoptees. He even espoused a modified version of the American Life League's abortion conspiracy theory--that, is pro-abortion organizations were going stealth or setting up front groups to push their agendas. Thus, adoptee rights activists and organizations were simply ungrateful bastards with no legitimate beefs and were either knowing agents of abortion or dupes.

The following conversation is taken from the official transcript of that show published at the time on the 700 Club's home page, since erased. Sekulow certainly knew the difference between open records and open adoption, but I have no idea if he made a slip of the tongue, intended to smear openness in adoption in general--or if, in fact if he was implying weirdly that open adoption causes abortion. There is no doubt, though that he was referring to records access.

Jay Sekulow

SEKULOW: ...The significance is that we expect that those who are in favor of abortion, those in the legislature that are pro-abortion, those that are trying to get this whole abortion agenda through, were looking at the Tennessee case and say "Gee, we should do this everywhere because they picked a great name, open adoption, but...

ROBERTSON: Do you really think that they had in view more abortions and less adoption Do you really feel that?

SEKULOW: Pat, they have had to. Can I give you tangible evidence? No, but I can give you the legal evidence. We looked at cases in the Untied States where judges from a Court of Appeals all over the country said, "this type of legislation opening up these records like this is pro-abortion." Those were the words a court said. There's a North Carolina Court of Appeals, Louisiana Court of Appeals, Texas Court of Appeals. These same types of bills were being put forward and the courts said, "The legislation is not pro-life. They said the opposite. They said, "This is pro-abortion This will encourage abortions and discourage adoptions." So they had to know that

Yet nine months later on April 2, 1997 edition of MSNBC's The Site (no longer online), ACLJ's Chief lawyer Larry Crane conceded that the ACLJ did not intend to use evidence they had gathered from a New South Wales study which showed that although abortion rates went up the first year open records were in effect, they declined steady after.

We're not relying on statistical evidence for our case, and we are not required to do to.

That's because there is none. Not that it makes any difference to the "for Life"(trademark) crowd who simply consider adopteess, ponceout of the womb, as another  step to tramp on as they ascend their stairway to heaven.

Glenn Beck: Redux

Ohio Right to Life now has a collection of pictures up on YouTube of the Glenn Beck's art project I reported on last week. Go below for a closer look at Beck, his faithful chalkboard, and 2500 fawning fans

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Beck, like Herman Cain, the soon-to-be-dumped-wannabe-prez, is a performance artist --or tries to be. He lacks the irony to pull it off except for the artless crowd that represents American culture today..

Here, for instance, is Beck a few months ago on Fox, calling for a pre-emptive US strike on England to prevent it from re-colonizing America.. It's all about the Beatles, doncha know:

The Brits are in cahoots with the Chinese. They’re aligned with the Islamo fascists who also want to take over the world. Together it’ll spread into India, which Britain also used to own. The Brits, the Chinese, the Arabs and the Indians, everyone in this caliphate cabal is a tea drinker—that’s the link that ties the conspiracy together, they use tea as a form of mind control.” Beck said. “The fall of Egypt is not about freedom, it’s not about democracy, it is about an Islamic state, too much tea and rock and roll.”

Although I don't know ORTL director Mike Gonidakis, I am pretty sure he'd not personally endorse this lunacy. From what I hear he's pretty smart, too The only logical reason I can come up with as to why Beck was invited to raise money for ORTL is that people will pay good money to be flim-flamed, and the larger the bam the bigger the boodle..

Ain't That a Shame? Pat Boone shills for an Issue 2 Yes.

Plunderbund got ahold of a robocall from Pat Boone urging us to vote YES on Issue 2

According to Pat, Issue 2 is opposed by a gazillion dollars worth of special interest boodle. If defeated, Oho's firefighters and cops will be thrown out of work. I can't cut and paste just the audio, so here is the link Plunderbund's piece.

I am distantly related to Pat Boone When I was a kid I thought it was pretty cool. I even had a pair of white bucks in his honor. Do you have any idea how much work it takes every day to keep them spiffy? Or how big they make your feet look?

Now Cousin Pat sounds like a tired old man. This is all the better K-sick could come up with?. I was at least expecting Chuck Norris.

Informed Consent v Informed Consent: Redux

Hypocrisy boiled to the top yesterday as Ohio Right to Life client-in-chief,  governor John Kasich, signed HB 63. The bill, sloganeered to "protect parental rights and save lives" was designed to "tighten" Ohio's parental consent loophole that allows  unmarried underage  women to get the juvenile court's permission, rather than, their parents, to undergo an abortion.

Hypocritical because the same politicians who cry foul over the judicial bypass for abortion, claiming it interferes with family communication and the ability of parents to oversee their daughters' medical needs, also support Ohio's "safe haven" law, which encourages teen women to carry a secret pregnancy to term with no parental knowledge or  medical monitoring, give secret birth alone under dangerous conditions, and then anonymously abandon the secret baby at an ER or fire station with no questions asked.

Nobody will ever have to know you had this baby.

ORTL director Mike Gonidakis celebrating its latest victory told the Columbus Dispatch:

Ohio is witnessing the blessings of having the most pro-life governor and general Assembly in our state's history working together to save lives.

Ya mean like this  (from my earlier Daily Bastardette and Theoconia blogs) Mike:

In the bizarro world of Ohio Right to Life, parental involvement  in teen pregnancies when "saving fetuses" is involved, is essential to the maintenance of “traditional family values” Involvement is eliminated in the name of “traditional family values” when it comes to the safety and welfare of young pregnant women, just delivered mothers, and just born babies as long as the babies are scheduled to be dumped on an ER counter.


Under the banner of informed consent, Ohio Right to Life insists on scaring -warning pregnant women with  a laundry list of what it claims are the harmful affects of abortion,   At the same time it  ignores the harmful affects of  secret pregnancy on the fetus,  the harmful affects of unattended secret birth on baby and mother, and the harmful affects of child abandonment. on both. Moreover, it does not address the legal ramifications of "safe haven." which are beyond the scope of this piece, but include protracted legal proceedings including  closed court hearings, the the filing of a deserted child complaint, and expensive DNA testing if reunification is desired.

HB 63 was signed with much fanfare that included a bevy of ORTL politicians, supporters and the inevitable troop of babies that appear at all ORTL functions.  (There was even a baby at the Glenn Beck installation.)

Hanging with Glenn Beck So You Don't Have To

 A slightly difference version of this article appears in the Columbus Free Press.

Glenn Beck is more dreadful than you think.

Thursday night (October 27)  I attended Glenn Beck's performance piece at Vets Memorial.  His appearance was sponsored by Ohio Right to Life to kick off its annual state conference and fill its operating budget (according to Beck) for next fiscal year.  Just buying a ticket wasn't good enough. In a word of faith moment,  Beck ordered us to pull out the donation envelopes from our programs and hold them tight for the next couple hours as he  inspired us to stuff them with cash, check or credit card number.  From the looks of the beg buckets held by ORTL volunteers standing  beneath the exit signs when it was all over, Beck had indeed miraculously  turned envelopes into cash.

Lying in bed the next morning I wondered just what I could write about Beck.  There must have been something in his 90 minute one man show that was revealing or quotable or enlightening, or entertaining..  Alas!  There is none. For 90 minutes Beck paced the stage, implored, and wept over....well... something, but it's unclear what.

When he was at Fox, Beck had time constrictions.With a live performance, anything goes. Obviously orchestrated and staged with chalkboard, Beck nevertheless gave the appearance of  running on  open-ended  stream of consciousness boosted by a couple hits of Adderall

Beck came out the gate running, telling the crowd of about 2,400 that he is not political.  "I've gone so far beyond  politics," he assured us with evangelical vigor.  The audience responded with excessive applause.

 Beck implored us to "follow where your heart is." To find our "complete life."  Instead of following our hearts, though,  for the next hour and a half we followed  Pilgrim Beck's dark heart through a murky maze of cliches, platitudes, and God talk between monologues on early 20th century progressivism,  collectivism, eugenics, history. and a short apology for his former life as a drunk..

Despite Beck's promise that he's "beyond politics" he vented on everything from the Arab Spring (bad) to Israel (good).  He told us that he'd "dragged"  his wife on three trips to Israel this year. One jaunt included a side trip to Auschwitz.  He gave us his  firsthand but foggy account of gas chambers, ovens, and  a life-changing experience that had something to do with God and the United States.

Beck was  particularly fascinated with the instruments of Nazi human extermination, telling us that "somebody thought it [killing Jews] was such a good idea" that  they put their names on the instruments of annihilation, He failed, however, to tell us whose names.  The audience, familiar with Beckian  verbal prestidigitation didn't need those names or a flowchart, however,  to attach  his allusion to the current  Planned Parenthood and to the historic Margaret Sanger and her unfortunate remarks on "the Negro problem." which he quoted at length later in the show..  The virtually all-white Vets crowd  shook its collective head.in disbelief.  Occasional shouts of  "We love you Glenn" or "God Bless you, Glenn" rang through the hall.. Beck remained modest.

Back at Auschwitz, Beck said he left the camp "outraged at the churches" and drove around the countryside screaming, "Where were you? Where were you?" a common rhetorical trick of  evangelicals to score points against "liberal" denominations especially when they're not around to defend themselves.

Glenn Beck making dead tissue.

Then it came to him.  We  suffer from "self-inflicted blindness." We see only what we want to see.  "People don't want to see pictures of dead tissue."  He used his own snot as an example. I'm not making this up

We also got some history lessons, presumably via Glenn Beck University "historian."  David Barton    ("David Barton's Christory" Free Press hardcopy,  Jan-Feb 2007; Theoconia Jan 4, 2007)  Beck's other staff historians from Hillsdale, who hold real academic credentials, might cringe at this nonsense. Or maybe not.

Beck informed us that presidential assassin John Wilkes Booth ("the Leonardo DeCaprio of his day") "lunged" at Abraham Lincoln shortly before the president delivered his second Inaugural Address.  Booth did, in fact, attend the March 1865 inauguration  as a guest of his fiance, Lucy  "Bessie" Hale, daughter of  US Senator John P. Hale. Although Booth reportedly said later that  he'd missed an excellent opportunity to kill the president,  there is no evidence of any "lunge" or that Booth was even close enough to "lunge " at  Lincoln.  Beck avoided the obvious question of why  Booth would  even consider pulling a "lunge" stunt in front of thousands of  more-or-less friendly people, especially when up to the Fall of Richmond in April 1865, his plan was to kidnap the president, not kill him. The point of this story was...I've either unremembered it or it was never articulated.

Taking another stroll down memory lane, Beck, warned us of the dangers of collectivism (aka  communism, Stalin,  and Occupy Wall Street) and eugenics (eating the rich).  He assured us that "you"  (that is, we in the audience) were probably safe from cannibals in Columbus. Maybe Wall Street derivatives pimps aren't.

As his 90 minutes closed in on him, Beck  proffered God as the solution to all of our our traumas--and  followed with the assurance that he was quite ready to talk for another two hours.  Miraculously,  Beck's proffer turned true. In a  few minutes God, in the form of a contract with Vets, forced Beck to wind up so Vets could tear down.

******

The Beck show was full of  narcissistic spectacle, but had no substance.  Ohio Right to Life and its  friends, though,  had plenty to say., and that's the real story. 

ORTL director Mike Gonidakis, in his opening remarks, listed ORTL's goals for the coming year(s):  defund Planned Parenthood; raise standards for abortion clinics (including prohibition of "telemed abortion."); push Michelle Bachmann's HR 3130 Heartbeat Informed Consent Act, through Congress; and introduce more "pro-life initiatives in the state.  He cited the imminent signing by John Kasich of HB 63, the tightening of "informed consent and 'parental notification"  for the state. ("Informed Consent v Informed Consent," Free Press , Oct 16, 2011; Theoconia, Oct 14, 2011..  Nothing really new there.

I know people who still fail to grasp that ORTL owns the Ohio legislature. For them, especially, here is Mike Gonidakis' list of funders and supporters of  the Beck performance--the creme de la creme of the Ohio Republican Party  with only John Kasich absent--and then in name only.

The anted-up included Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted,  Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, Ohio Auditor Dave Yost, Cong. Jim Jordan, Steve Stivers, Pat Tieberi,  Bob Latta,  Steve Austria,  Jim Renacci,  Bob Gibbs,  Steve Chabot, and  Ohio Senator from Columbus,  Jim Hughes. Jordan, Latta, and Yost were among state pols commended for donating blocks of tickets to ORTL local affiliates enabling the less fortunate to attend.  (While waving his envelope around on the stage, Beck comiserated with the less fortunate in the audience declaring he'd be there with them himself some day.)  Gonidakis said 65 state affiliates were represented at the event, and people had come from as far away as Kentucky, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Illinois and Colorado to attend.

Absent were Central Ohio's usual suspects, Coach Dave Daubenmire (Pass the Salt ),  Pastor Bill Dunfee,  (New Beginnings Church, Warsaw, OH), Dr. Patrick Johnston  (PersonhoodOhio and Stop Columbus Killing) and Mark Harrington Created Equal).  Harrington has supported ORTL legislation in the past,  but the others consider the organization  weak-kneed, insufficiently Christian, and "pro-abortion,"  floundering  around " in Daubenmire's "evangelifish" tank.

Gonitakis made a special effort to acknowledge National and Ohio Right to Life founder, Dr. Jack Willke.  Willke  who recently walked off the ORTL board in a very loud huff,  taking Cincinnati RTL and others with him, after the board refused to support HB 125,  the Heartbeat bill (not to be confused with the Bachmann's federal proposal) that would virtually outlaw all abortion in Ohio. The  Ohio bill originated with Willke and his protege, former ORTL leg director and evangelical rock star  Janet Folger Porter. (Faith2Action and Ohio ProLife Action.)  The consequences of the the split are yet to be seen.  Several times, Gonidakis  acknowledged support from the Tea Party (however that's defined nowadays), so much so, that I wondered just how much money "the Tea Party" has tossed ORTL's way, and marked it down as something to look into later.

Following Gonidaks' welcome,  we got a few words from David C Forbes, Jr, senior pastor  of the Columbus Christian Center.   He and his Columbus Christian Center Choir were virtually the only African Americans in the  audience that I observed.

Six years ago, Forbes sat on the board of Rod Parsley's Christian domionist Reformation Ohio and spoke at its launch on the statehouse lawn in  November 2005. ("Coup d'etat in Ohio?"  (Free Press, November 15, 2005; Theoconia, July 11, 2006.)  Also on the board was then-Ohio State Rep Linda Reidelbach, now a founding board member of  Willke and Folger Porter's challenge to ORT: leadership, Ohio ProLife Action.

Strategy Group for Media , producers of "effective and engaging political advertising for conservative, pro-life candidates across the nation" was on hand with swag and promo videos of various Ohio politicians pushing ORTL.  SMG's clients include John Kasich, Rand Paul,  John Boozeman, Jim DeMnt, Joe Pitts, and overall, the Ohio Republican Party..  It operates out of several locations, including Delaware, Ohio.

Other  Beck event sponsors:   Kalmbach Feeds (Upper Sandusky),  Home City Ice (Grove City); Graphic Services Group Ltd (Dublin),  Sports Ohio (Dublin);  , S&; K Concrete (Akron),  MDS Communications (Mesa, AZ),  InfoCision, (Akron).  WRFD-AM, (Columbus) and Catholic Speakers Bureau (LA County,.Clients include Alan Keyes, Bay Buchanan, Bobby Schindler, and  Jill Stanek, ). 

Non-profits:  Heartbeat International (home base, Columbus), Teachers Saving Children, Inc, (Ohio Chapter endorsed by Jack Willke),  A Voice for Life (an anti-abortion documentary based  in Mansfield and endorsed by Willke), and  VoteYesOnIssue3.com (Columbus).

******

I've attended numerous evangelical and quasi-evangelical events, some of which I've written about for the Free Press and Theoconia.  These include the 1999 D. James Kennedy's Center for Reclaiming America conference at Coral Ridge Ministries, in Fort Lauderdale;  the 2001 Christian Coalition  Road to Victory Conference in Washington DC   (speeches from dozens of nationally elected officials and rightwing celebrities such as  Tom DeLay, Pat Robertson,  Phyllis Schlafly,  Pat Boone, Ehud Olmert, Alan Keyes, Jim Inhofe, Ernest Istook, Donna Rice Hughes, Lindsey Graham, and a outbreak of tongues  for Israel);  a half dozen Teen Mania stadium events ("Teen mania: Lift the Banner," Free Press, hardcopy July-Sept 2006;   Theoconia, July 27, 2006;  the 2005 Operation Save America invasion of Columbus, and related events (see left sidebar for numerous  links)  and many smaller events and get-togethers in Central Ohio. This, however, was my first ORTL event.

There was little difference between  the spirit, aesthetics, and message of those events and the Glenn Beck one man show, except Glenn lacked the dog and pony that are standard fare with the big boys and girls. .  Praise music and prayer, an American flag as tall as your house, the linking of ORTL's  anti-abortion crusade to the American state, Christian conversion (even if Beck is L-d-S)  all  enabled Ohio Right to Life to slip out of its public quasi- secular costume and slip into its something-a-little more-comfortable Armour of God.

National Adoption Awareness Month: Shilling for Adoptacrats

NOTE:  Because this entry, originally posted on my main blog,  The Daily Bastardette, covers in part "christian adoption,"  I am cross-posting it here.  The Daily Bastardette is commentary by on identity and adoptee rights, and the atrocities the adoption industry and "friendly" deformers concoct to maintain The Adoption Culture of Shame and Acquiesce.

Today the adoption industry  launches the 2011 edition of  National Adoption Awareness Month. (NAAM) Bastardette knows you've been looking forward to this great event as much as she has.

Coincidentally,  today also marks the first day of November NaBloPoMo . No, that's not an unspeakable sex act.  It's the November edition of National Blog  Posting Month, a blog ritual for over-zealous bloggers  who promise to blog every day on a designated  topic each month.  Topics that only the most abstract students of 19th century British literature can appreciate fully, such as "return" and "between,"  November, however is  the open month, which means we can choose our own bloviation.  My subject, naturally is adoption.

I successfully completed the 2009 November NaBloPoMo none the worse for wear but full of wonderment that I succeeded. . You'd be surprised, though,  at the topics that  land in your brain when you are desperate to cross the finish line. 2010  November NaBloPoMo was more difficult.. I finished exhausted, but finished. This year, due to my summer hiatus I feel up to it--so far. There is so much to write about that surely I can fill up 30 days as easily as filling up water balloon and dropping it on the head of an adoptacrat below.  I've got several topics lined up so far.  It's just a matter of time and articulation.


Today I had planned to comment on suggested NAAM activities listed on the web, but decided commentary would be anti-climatic, so I'll post some links  for your enjoyment instead..  adoption.com furnishes us with a calendar of daily celebratory events:  a dinner table discussion of the history of NAAM; cooking  with child (adoptees beware!); helping your library set up an adoption book display,  surprising your child with a few Chinese or Russian words; creating an adoption family tradition ( GOTCHA?)!;  and adoption stories. (aren't they all?)  My favorite is the activity for November 28:  spend some time at a maternity home. Is that an order? My mother been there done that.  Look what she got out of it.  Or didn't.

Self proclaimed adoption expert and gadfly Mardie Cardwell suggests we

• donate money to adoption foundations; especially Mardie Cardwell's  Lifetime Adoption Foundation. 

• suggest  adoption books to your local library; especially books by Mardie Cardwell

• learn more about Positive Adoption Language, a pet project of  Mardie Cardwell

•  order adoption prayer bracelets designed and sold by Mardie Cardwell. 

Here's a suggestion . Let's change the name of National Adoption Awareness Month to National Mardie Cardwell Awareness Month.

Then  there's Holly Erritt, proprietress of Little Blessing Adoptions, running a  Facebook sale on your Dear Birthparent; Letter; Lifebook. Adoption Resume and webpage design needs.

***NATIONAL ADOPTION MONTH SPECIAL FOR NEW LBAS CLIENTS****

Take 10% OFF Adoption Profile Design, 10% OFF Adoption Website Design OR 10% OFF Printing of Adoption Profile Books, Adoption Pass Along Cards, or Adoption Brochures. *New Clients Only - Contract must be received by November 11, 2011

Of course. this doesn't' even begin to cover the hundreds of puffy national and local news stories on the blessings of adoption;  hardluck tales of paps, adopters, and orphans; interviews with adoptacrats (special emphasis on Christocrat adoptacrats); sappy  reunion accounts that not once mention that states continue to refuse to restore  the right of all adoptees to access their birth certificates  without exception, a right these same states once upheld without exception.

NAAM is also a good time for the professional adoption class:  the Evan B Donaldson Adoption Institute, The National Council for Adoption, JCICS, and local agencies to beg poor so they can continue to provide "services" to their clients..  No adoptees need apply.

NAAM also brings lifers out en force  pounding their hammers on the heads of adoptees who exhibit insufficient gratitude for all the work the fetus savers have done in  "our" sacred name. Right to Life,  Students for Life, Feminists for Life, Democrats for Life, Priests for Life,  Life Issues, Institute, the American Life League, Human Life International.will howl incessantly on how adoption saves fetuses baybees for adoption-the-loving-option  (which it doesn't)--and btw, send us money.   By publicly celebrating the spurious"life saving" elements  of adoption, lifers and their ilk can hide their aggressive hatred of Class Bastard and pantless parents who fail to appreciate their efforts and would like more than anything for them  than to go back to their pews and mind their own business.


So welcome to National Adoption Awareness Month and November NaBloPoMo.  Bastardette won't shut up.  We hope you won't either.