Our Records, Our Rights Rally Invocation

This is an archive of the original Bastard Quarterly newsletter, edited by Damsel Plum and Charles Filius. It was published in print and on the web between 1997 and 2002.

Our Records, Our Rights Rally Invocation

Father Tom Brosnan, sunam@aol.com
November 8th, 1997
Philadelphia, PA

(This article first appeared in the Winter 1998 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

Hear O Lord, the sound of my call. Hear O Lord, and answer.

Today we protest! Today we pray.

We, the ones relinquished, Bastards and orphans, adoptees all. We come together today before America's Liberty Bell, the great symbol of independence and emancipation. The symbol that reminds us and America, that there are certain rights, inalienable in nature, that are endowed upon each human person, by virtue of his or her likeness to the Creator, that no person or institution may abrogate.

Over the past five decades or more, the inalienable right to know the mother who gave you birth, the father who begat you, the name given you at birth, and even baptism: that inalienable right has been abrogated, taken from us by stealth and storm. Taken from us, who, American citizenship notwithstanding, and through no fault of our own, have suffered relinquishment to the closed adoption system.

Here today we protest the theft of name and heritage. From state to state, the adoption bureaucracy stands, bolstered in recent years through the increased buying and selling of babies. A bureaucracy that stands, arms folded, in George Wallace fashion, refusing us, as adult adoptees, access to the records which chronicle our parents, our ethnic heritage, our medical history, our names. Here today, we protest!

And sadly, church officials, especially certain Catholic bishops, like whitened sepulchers, rail against the abortion laws, based on principles of privacy, that usurp the rights of the unborn to live. While on the other side of the Episcopal mound, in matters of closed adoption, claim that a woman's right to privacy is supreme. That a mother has the right to privacy, even from her own child. Here today, we protest!

Today we join our voices with those of Bastards and adoptees throughout history. Today we stand before the monolith of the closed adoption system, the very soul of secrets and lies, and we demand our God-given right from whence we came, to whom we were born, the name given us at birth. We call to awaken America to the injustice that forbids us access to our heritage by blood.

Here today, like Moses before pharaoh, we protest! And like every orphan and Bastard, we pray. We pray that the hearts of government officials, and church authorities, will not remain hardened against the pursuit of truth, and family reunion. We pray that the government officials, and church authorities, will not place impossible burdens upon the backs of the adopted. The heavy burden of never knowing heritage and family. And like the adopted Moses standing before the burning bush, we seek the peace that only truth can bring. In that moment of sacred history, God revealed to Moses two truths: the divine name, and Moses' identity. God revealed himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of Moses’s Hebrew parents, confirming the

adopted Moses in his true identity, as the Hebrew-raised-Egyptian. Here today, we protest, and we pray.

Today we protest, though we stand without the political influence of the powerful adoption lobby, and without the wealth of self-made baby brokers, and today, we pray. Invoking the One who created us in His image and likeness, Bastards and orphans, adoptees all. To you, O beauty, ever ancient, ever new. To you, protector of orphans, and defender of the poor. We beseech you, come to our aid, Lord God Almighty, and break through the secrecy and lies of closed adoption. With Your almighty power, unseal all closed records, and reveal to our eyes the truth of our origins. In reverent worship, in ardent pursuit of truth, we, Bastards and orphans, adoptees all, give you the glory, forever and ever. Amen

(This article first appeared in the Winter 1998 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)