(This feature first appeared in the Fall 1998 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

Recently I went to the Bastard Nation PO Box, and what do you think I found? My long awaited copy of NCFA Notes. For nearly 6 months I’d been obsessively waiting for my subscription to start. I’d even become a tad suspicious that Dr. Pierce had taken my $30 and donated it to Oregon’s CAP ("Concerned Adoption Professionals.") Then, just when I was considering hauling the NCFA before Judge Judy, it arrived, with its dancing daisy chain children masthead, Newt Gingrich lead, 12 pages of utter misinformation about Open Records, and a dig or two at Bastard Nation.

For those of you unfamiliar with NCFA Notes, it is the official newsletter of the National Council for Adoption. Written for public consumption, NCFA Notes is full of fantasies of ungrateful self-centered open records bastards and their ill-informed trendy adoptive parents who support legal equality for adoptees all under the cover of "public policy." Little mention is made of birth parents except for the NCFA’s compulsive desire to protect "courageous" birthmothers from owning their pasts. Birthfathers get short shrift and don’t seem to count for much in the NCFA world.

Two particularly eccentric articles "Maryland Gov. Glendening Signs Bill Releasing Most Birth Certificates" and "Delaware Governor Carper Signs Bill Releasing Most Birth Certificates" (in which Voices of Adoption founder Denise Castellucci is accused of being "anti-adoption"!) are must see NCFA.

Here's an excerpt from Maryland:

"One of NCFA's staff members was in an earshot of the legislator who assured the anti-adoption and open records advocates that he would deliver for them. And deliver he did. The first "bite at the apple" involved passing a confidential intermediary system--exactly the sort of confrontational system that Pennsylvania has and that resulted in leaks and other invasions of the privacy of adult Carol Sandusky.

"The stragegy was simple: confront the agencies in Maryland with the "open records" bill from the previous year and then offer a "compromise" in the form of a search-and consent" system. Part of the strategy was clear from the witnesses who testified. ***On one extreme was a person who in the words of NCFA's Patrick Putrill wore, "a very interesting costume that looked like it belonged in San Francisco during the flower child era." The witness with the flamboyant garb was from B*ST*RD NATION (BN) the self-styled "real adoptee advocacy voice demanding fully-open records without delay and compromise.*** " (Hey who was that, and did you dose

Patrick's coffee?)

"....Next year, according to the plan, the anti-adoption forces and their legislative cohorts will be back for their "second bite" at the apple--probably attempting to pass a bill similar to the Tennessee bill. If that happens, hopefully NCFA will not be the lone voice of opposition."

(NOTE: does this strike you as a rather self-defeating statement?, i.e. even Catholic Charities doesn't want to hear it.)

Now on Delaware (wherein the compromisers are made out to look like tactical geniuses.)

"What happened is that the anti-adoption forces streamed into Delaware for hearings, raising noisy objections. The fact that they were from outside the state never seemed to register with the Delaware legislators, who--somewhat characteristically--were frightened by the controversy.

***But rather than just backing away from the Uniform Adoption Act, or even replacing the section on mutual consent registeries that an anti-adoption group called "Voices of Adoption" termed "draconian" in its January newsletter, the legislators flipped. An open records bill started moving through the legislature.***

".....In the end, the leading group working to open records, the American Adoption Congress, (!) pulled off a major coup by convincing legislators that two cosmetic changes to the bill would satisfy opponents, especially Catholic Charities....The lesson to be learned is that a small group of

well-organized anti-adoption advocates operating largely through the internet from outside the state, can turn any positive adoption initiative into a disaster. Why can this happen? Because those who can and should speak up do so belatedly and weakly or not at all. As the saying goes,

"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing."

Let me close by saying that I love the National Council for Adoption. I love the NCFA like I love the Family Research Council, the Christian Coalition, Phyliss Schflaley and Pat Robertson. Unlike our more moderate enemies such as the ACLU and Planned Parenthood, with their mushy liberal fence sitting, the NCFA, et al. are models of organization, propaganda, and ideological integrity (as much as I disagree with them.)

NOTE: Oh Nooooooo, Dr. Bill! is the first of a regular column by BN Executive Chair Marley Greiner, in which she will comment on the NCFA and occasionally other opponents of Open Records. If you have an NCFA anecdote you’d like to share, please send it to Marley at maddogmarley@worldnet.att.net

(This feature first appeared in the Fall 1998 issue of the Bastard Quarterly.)

Copyright 1998 Bastard Nation
All Rights Reserved