Category Archives: Adoptee Discrmination

‘No friends but the mountains’

The Kurds’ saying is also true for adoptees: “No friends but the mountains.”

I rarely do videos related to my book on my story as an adoptee and U.S. adoption history, or on larger adoptee rights issues.

Last week, I decided to make one. Find my video here.

I made it on the fly, in response to a now-stalled and wildly discriminatory bill against adoptees in the California Assembly, AB 1302.

I needed to express my realization and my personal and sobering assessment of the cold, hard, and inequitable reality that adoptees continue to face in the political sphere. In that place where laws, politics, power, and culture collide, adoption remains a reliably bipartisan issue championed by Democrats and Republicans in states and nationally. We saw that with this bill in a state with a rock-solid Democrat super majority in the state legislature and control of the Governor’s office.

Here is reality as I see it based on the outcomes and the events that unfolded: Adoptees have no friends but the mountains.

My video that I shared shortly after the California Judiciary approved an anti-adoptee bill with not one “no” vote and the committee controlled by Democrats by a nearly 3-1 margin.

I stand by this assessment because the facts point to this long-used Kurdish metaphor of being betrayed by all sides, which all of us can independently verify and see.

We do not have to like it, but confronting the underlying truth is critical to how one approaches solutions strategically. It is also relevant for what I see in my birth state of Michigan, where there is no effort by a Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, or its Democratically controlled legislature to even acknowledge denied human and legal rights to thousands of adoptees like me who were born there.

What happened and where is this bill in the California Legislature:

Apparently this measure is now stalled because it did not advance on the legislative calendar for this year.

However, I cannot independently confirm this based on the bill’s tracking record, but this has been reported by the Adoptee Rights Law Center. That would mean the measure is still ready to be heard in 2024 by the Assembly Health Care Committee. I think we all need to see this communicated clearly by the California Legislature too.

Assemblymember Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale) is the prime sponsor of AB 1302, which is one of the most anti-adoptee pieces of legislation proposed in a state legislature in years, based on its potential harm to likely tens of thousands of adoptees born in California.

This measure is sponsored and championed by an anti-abortion, right-leaning state lawmaker, Assemblymember Tom Lackey (R-Palmdale). He is an adoptive parent of two children, and his anti-abortion voting record aligns with the wider GOP efforts to promote adoption as the so-called “policy alternative” to abortion.

As we’ve seen since the U.S. Supreme Court’s anti-women decision the 2022 Dobbs decision, this view is gaining momentum, to the detriment of adoptees and women and their rights to bodily autonomy.

In his deliberately dishonest presentation of what the bill would do, Lackey was joined by the proverbial “anti-adoptee” Quisling. I use that term for a person who is adopted and who supports legislation that harms the collective group of millions of adoptees. In this case it was a seasoned corporate lobbyist named Lance Hastings, who fulfilled the obligatory role of a Quisling we see whenever adoptees are sold out without regard to their inherent legal and human rights. “Quisling” is the appropriate word because the facts bear it out.

Both Lackey and the Quisling presented what I call false statements and framing comments that no one called out for what they were.

Before the hearing, adoptees and adoptee rights advocates, however, provided lawmakers ample documentation to call out such falsehoods. From what I saw, no comments were uttered by lawmakers who had that information.

Afterwards, Bastard Nation, which staunchly opposed this regressive and discriminatory measure, wrote a devastating analysis of everything wrong with this harmful proposed bill. That analysis noted: “AB1302 bill would not have flown 50 years ago much less today. It goes against current adoption culture, best practice standards, and the success of the adoptee rights and justice movement/OBC access. [Fourteen] states already unseal [original birth certificates] with no restrictions or conditions for the adoptees to which they belong.” Also go here to see the nightmare that AB 1302 would lead to if passed as written; the infographic is by Adoptee Rights Law, and is brilliant. Also see Adoptee Rights Law summary here.

The legislative kabuki during the bill hearing proved the hardest to watch and internalize. I say kabuki because that best describes the bill hearing for this toxic measure and how publicly disengaged logical allies were at the bill’s hearing on April 18, 2023, with the Assembly Judiciary Committee. (See the full hearing recording here, starting at around 37:00, with the CalOpens testimony against starting at 46:00.) The logical allies, many assume, would be California’s elected Democrats on the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

This committee has eight Democrats and three Republicans.

At no time did Democrats state facts provided to them by multiple adoptee rights advocates in advance that no adoptee rights group supported the measure or were consulted. At no time did Democrats state the most basic fact of all: that this bill and existing law deny all adoptees in California equal treatment by law.

Zip.

Nothing.

Silence.

And no on in that room needed anyone to tell them millions of adoptees, including all of those born in California, are denied equality by law.

That is the 800-pound gorilla that not one of them had the cojones to confront. Even worse, this Democrat-dominated committee recorded not one “no” vote.

Worse, it’s impossible to even tell during the roll call from the legislative video what the abstaining votes said when asked to publicly cast their vote. It sounded like mumbles so they would not heard, as they apparently cowered with their muffled public votes.

This is a copy of the California Assembly Judiciary vote on April 18, 2023, when no Democrats voted against a measure that passed with eight yes votes and three abstentions, which if passed into law would further deprive basic legal rights from thousands of California-born adoptees.

Adoptees can learn from the Kurds: they have no friends but the mountains

According to the legislative record, which is published however, eight committee members voted for it, and three “abstained.”

That’s called cowardice, because it is. I believe that is a factual statement too.

In short, adoptees were abandoned again by legislative silence and performance gestures.

The worst of the lies and talking point shared repeatedly in most legislative hearings, that a birth mother was promised confidentiality, was not corrected, even after a lawyer invited to the presenter table for reasons I still don’t understand openly lied to committee members that a so-called “presumed promise” of confidentiality to women coerced into surrendering their children to adoption existed.

For the record, no such legal promise has ever been made or documented in any court or legislative setting.

Bastard Nation in its submitted response on this bill addressed this canard that never, ever dies: “There is no evidence in any state that records were sealed to ‘protect’ the reputation or ‘privacy’ of biological parents who relinquished children for adoption. In the over 60 years of the adoptee rights struggle, not one single document has been presented anywhere that shows that birthparents were promised or guaranteed anonymity by the state or anyone else. If they were made on the sly, they were made by individuals who had no legal authority to do so.”

In the end, misinformation and kabuki prevailed.

Adoptees were abandoned by their likely but no-show “friends,” and the bill advanced.

Though this bill appears to be on hold until 2024—which I still can’t verify on the Legislature’s website—adoptees will have to confront their reality in other states and with the public.

The Kurds know betrayal well having endured countless acts of harm from nations in their historic homelands, as well as from the United States.

Right now, they have no allies.

They have no “friends” willing to correct lies and misinformation when it counts and where it counts.

They are utterly on their own, as they always have been the last half-century of working tirelessly to end legal discrimination, rooted in my view in their illegitimate status.

So that is why I made my video, as a reminder of lived truth, which the historically persecuted Kurdish people have experienced since they were denied a nation state by conniving colonial powers after WWI. They have a saying, uttered at each violent, tragic betrayal by all nations, repeatedly since that time: “No friends but the mountains.”

Adoptee rights and family medical history: this is obvious and let’s talk about it

We still don’t know to this day how many adoptees there are in the United States. That also means we don’t know how many of them are now at elevated risk of genetically-based medical conditions. But we do know that knowing one’s family medical history is a best medical practice. This is not rocket science here.

As an adoptee, I still am baffled why so few of my fellow adoptees speak the language of medical harm that is foundational to this system. Even adoptee rights activists I know who are really smart either don’t get this or refuse to talk about this.

I always have talked about it and I will continue to raise this issue, as I did in my book on how adoption also is a public health issue that causes harm. In chapter 8 of my book, You Don’t Know How Lucky You Are, I outlined the extensive research documenting the critical importance of knowing one’s family medical history: “Having access to family health history and information on other relatives—relatives who are genetically related—is considered by the nation’s foremost health experts to be necessary and beneficial for individual and population health. But as of 2018, there is no national campaign or policy initiative to promote giving hundreds of thousands of adoptees the ability to learn about their family medical health history.”

In my case, I’ve known my bio-family since 1989. This week I just learned that my family has a medical condition with genetic risk factors that mean I likely will be at risk. The right to know one’s family medical history is a basic human right that is denied to most adoptees by law. This must end. And if adoptees can’t even talk about it, shame on all of us.

Kinship and ethnic ancestries matter in our bones

Every one of us is connected in a web of ancestral ties, to those who came before us, though U.S. adopted persons are denied the knowledge of these ties by regressive laws in most states.

During the last two months, I have had some profoundly memorable conversations with my friend. He is an adoptee like me who discovered his maternal kin and ancestry later in life as an adult.

Like me, my friend was denied his true vital records and kinship information by law. In his case, Washington state denied him equal treatment by law in accessing his original vital records. Despite laws denying him absolutely vital information about who he is and from whence he came, he was able to find his family by perseverance and hard work.

Only this weekend, after we talked our family histories and DNA search tools in greater depth, did I make an important realization about his kinship and ethnic ties to his Jewish ancestors in Europe. He acknowledged that his Jewish heritage to kin that once lived in Europe means he had distal kin and ancestors who were murdered in the Holocaust. It is a heavy load to carry.

Then it dawned on me how important this is for him.

Auschwitz escapee, hero, and humanitarian, Rudolf Vrba

He was intensely interested in the amazing and true story of Auschwitz survivor and escapee Rudolf Vrba, who published a memoir of his feats in 1963 called “I Escaped from Auschwitz.”

I had told him about the book and shared with him an essay I wrote and published about Vrba and fellow escapee Alfred Wetzler in late December 2022. He then listened to an audiobook recording of Vrba famous co-written memoir, with Irish journalist Alan Bestic, and expressed profound awe of Vrba’s heroism and success alerting the world about the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. That warning ultimately saved the lives of 200,000 Hungarian Jews.

Last weekend we talked more about what being an American distal relative means to someone with Jewish ancestors.

He clearly knows this means that European kin of their shared Jewish ancestors were murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust, which claimed up to 6 million Jewish civilian lives alone.

I then told him about my trip to Poland in July 2000, when I was working on my Holocaust and Nazi concentration and death camp photo project. My friend solemnly acknowledged his roots likely lie in a shtetl somewhere in Europe, and that the fate of those there likely ended in World War II, probably in one of the Nazi death camps built in Poland. (See this powerful 1996 PBS Frontline documentary on the fate of Jewish civilians in just one historic shtetl, Bransk.)

Contact sheet showing the desecrated synagogue in the shtetl/town of Cieszanów, Poland (2000)

My friend appreciated my story visiting one of the long-gone shtetls in Poland, the small village of Cieszanów, Poland. While the town remains, the Jewish inhabitants do not. I travelled there with a Polish Holocaust tour guide and a fellow American, on our day-long trip to the former death camps of Sobibor and Belzec, which were two of the three death camps in eastern modern-day Poland where Nazis killed approximately 600,000 civilians, most Jews.

On our short visit to this small Jewish town, we visited the long-desecrated synagogue. It was already in terrible condition in July 2000, and Google shows it looks worse today. My fellow American traveler that day lit a candle in the overgrown former Jewish cemetery close by, in honor of some friends, whose family could trace their origins to this community.

What is painful to me as an adoptee is knowing my friend was denied knowledge of his likely blood-kinship ties to places like this in Europe. The state of Washington did not help him—in fact, they still deny all adoptees equal rights to their vital records, and thus their ability to know where they trace their lineage, kin ties, ethnicity, and vital ancestral stories.

This is one of the more horrible cruelties of this system as it exists today in the United States, with a patchwork of mostly discriminatory laws denying millions of persons their family history, medical history, kin relations, and ethnic identity as a matter of law.

As an adoptee rights advocate for years, I have long argued that all of us, every single one of us, everywhere in the world, regardless of the systems that brought us into the world, have an inherent human right to know who we are and from whence we come. Global systems like adoption, which are still beloved by many, including many on the “progressive” political spectrum today in the United States, deny this and perpetuate harm to generations now

My hidden and severed kin ties to Finland

Finnish-American timber workers, date unknown (courtesy of the Library of Congress)

I write about this issue in my book, particularly how I discovered my ethnic identity linked to Wales and England and also to Finland on my birth mother’s side after I was 24 years old.

These stories, as I could tell from my friend, matter in our bones. And I felt a special privilege that I could let him know I was once able to visit a shtetl for others, when he may not get that chance.

In my book, I paid homage to celebrated African American author Alex Haley, author of Roots. The celebrated and pathbreaking novel details the history of his family and their journey from a village in Africa, to chattel slavery for generations, and to eventual freedom. Haley’s words describe why these ties matter that we can feel in our bones. “In all of us there is a hunger, marrow-deep, to know our heritage—to know who we are and where we have come from…Without this enriching knowledge, there is a hollow yearning. No matter what our attainments in life, there is still a vacuum, an emptiness, and the most disquieting loneliness.”

During my conversations with my fellow adoptee friend, I shared my story about my Finnish ancestral ties.

My biological maternal grandmother is Finnish American, born in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where many Finnish immigrants to the United States arrived at the end of the 19^th century and beginning of the 20^th century.

According to the U.S. Library of Congress, the 1920 Census again showed that Michigan and Minnesota were home to the largest numbers of Finnish-Americans, with about one-third of the total U.S. population born in Finland evenly divided between each state. I’m a descendant of this group who settled in the Upper Peninsula to do unpleasant things like timber harvesting and iron ore mining, and maybe some fishing on the side. No wonder my grandmother left there at an early age.

Since finding out I had at least one-quarter Finnish ancestry, I have celebrated my Finnish roots.

“Kullervo Departs for the War,” by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1901), from the Ateneum Art Museum

For the past few years, I’ve been honoring Kalevala Day, a national holiday in Finland celebrated each year on February 28. The day honors the national long-form epic poem called the Kalevala that was published in 1849 (as the “New Kalevala” compared to the earlier “Old Kalevala”) by the folklorist Elias Lönnrot.

Working as a doctor in rural areas, Lönnrot for years travelled widely in rural areas of Finland and the Karelian region collecting folk poetry that was usually sung, similar to epic poems of other cultures historically. The stories and poems are part of the Arctic region’s rich oral tradition, passed down in Balto-Finnic languages for at least two millennia.

I recently found an English translation on Project Gutenberg. I also just started reading the Old Kalevala, and I am enjoying it. The Kalevala is a type of storytelling so unlike Western traditions, and full of earthy descriptions that touch on many senses. Here is a small sampling of the story and a description of Lemminkainen, one of the poem’s main hero characters:

The Old Kalevala, a collection of folk stories and poems that preceded the publication of the Kalevala

Straightway Lemminkainen journeyed
With the maidens to the castle;
There he sang and conjured pitchers
On the borders of the tables,
Sang and conjured golden goblets
Foaming with the beer of barley;
Sang he many well-filled vessels,
Bowls of honey-drink abundant,
Sweetest butter, toothsome biscuit,
Bacon, fish, and veal, and venison,
All the dainties of the Northland,
Wherewithal to still his hunger.

The famed fantasy writer J.R.R. Tolkien was so smitten by the Kalevala as a young man in 1911, he attempted to read it in the original Finnish. He called the Kalevala a collection of “wild” and “uncivilized and primitive tales.” He borrowed many stories from it for his mythical work called the Silmarillion, and he patterned his self-created Elvish language from modern Finnish language spoken and written today.

As a longtime Tolkien fan, perhaps it is just normal that I also am drawn to this tale, as I am to most folk stories from around the world.

I also am drawn to my Finnish ancestry because of the land’s harshness and how its weather and landscape shaped the character of today’s modern Finland.

Finnish relatives of author Rudy Owens

It is a country that repelled a brutal and unprovoked invasion by the USSR and dictator Josef Stalin in 1939 and early 1940 called the Winter War. Historically, it is one of the few lands in northern Europe that also repelled Viking incursions, when nearly every other location from Constantinople to modern-day Russia to England and mainland Europe succumbed. The normally terrifying Vikings fled due to the ferocity and tactics of the stubborn local residents.

Finns call this historic trait of defiance and stubbornness “Sisu,” which translates to never giving up.

After I found my maternal biological family in the late 1980s, they shared with me some historic photos of Finnish ancestors. They are a very tough looking bunch. Despite their rough edges, the Finns perfected the sauna. They also like coffee and Nordic skiing, as I do. Today they have perhaps one of the world’s best national health systems and national education systems, outperforming the United States in nearly all key measures.

The Finnish symbol called the Hannunvaakuna

I have often wondered if my Finnish genetic heritage played a role in my fight for my birth records that lasted nearly three decades with the state of Michigan and the discriminatory public health agency there that manages all adoptees’ vital records, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. I take pride that the state did everything it could to defeat me, to deny me my humanity and my ancestry, and in the end, my ancestry prevailed over a broken system.

The 2015 Finnish biathlon ski uniform, showing the Hannunvaakuna symbol and traditional Finnish colors

I recently decided that I will adopt a uniquely Finnish “brand” for some of my future communications. I have chosen the Hannunvaakuna, a symbol seen widely in Finland. It can be seen on book covers, like the one above for the Old Kalevala, in photos of stone art, and on all kinds of Finnish things. The Finnish biathlon team also slapped it on their badass team uniform in 2015 tooI have seen variations of this in Native American art, and there was no cultural connection between these parts of the world—so it has a universality to it. I am working on putting this symbol on my next hoodie.

I also am looking ahead now to planning a trip to Finland, mostly because I have long wanted to visit one of my ancestral homes. I will probably look like many people there, because genetically I am connected to the people who call it home.

‘Picking a target’ in 2023 for adoptee rights advocacy

It’s now 2023. A new year has begun, and for thousands of Michigan-born adoptees like me, none are any closer to having their legal rights restored to their original birth certificates.

So this year, I am going to put the spotlight on this state’s leaders, especially Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who are failing to right a massive wrong that denies basic human rights to people only because of the status at birth.

Go here to read my full article, analyzing failures in Michigan’s agency responsible for overseeing vital records and leadership by all branches of state government.

My article also analyzes the sometimes complex and even messy world associated with issue advocacy, including the mostly ignored world of adoptee rights.

Here’s my list of tips (also found in my longer article) for adoptee rights advocates in Michigan, or their allies (all allies are welcome, too):

If you live in Michigan, make noise. Be that annoying tsetse fly for Gov. Whitmer and state lawmakers who cannot be ignored until your bites are so painful that you are acknowledged. To that end, here are friendly resource on tips for advocates with limited resources, from Saul Alinsky.
You can develop relations with lawmakers and request personal meetings if you are going to Lansing. You can also share information with your local media, if they still exist, in the form of letters to the editor or on social media calling attention to denied legal rights. Social media may be helpful if you are good in that space. With Twitter turning into a large mess, I am not sure what platform may be the most effective now.
If you are more of a “power broker” kind of person, who knows “the game” (meaning you have “connections to those in power), a more effective way to make change is to engage Gov. Whitmer.
If you are not able to engage Gov. Whitmer, the most powerful power broker of all is a governor’s chief of staff. Gov. Whitmer’s Chief of Staff is, as of Jan. 2, 2022, JoAnne Huls. Because chiefs of staff try to be invisible to public and only to speak with deal-makers, the other best possible person for real access is a governor’s communications director, who manages a governor’s “brand.” Bobby Leddy is Gov. Whitmer’s communications director, and he is active on Twitter and can be “pinged” and equally “annoyed” with persistent, fact-based activity about adoptee rights concerns.
In addition to copying Leddy on Twitter, consider using this account to get Gov. Whitmer’s staff’s attention: Press@Michigan.gov. They will care if you are a state voter, in the way they won’t care about someone like me, who is not a voter in the state.
The best way to promote reform is by telling stories of the injustices you have encountered. Make it personal and say what happened and what it means to you. Name names and make it personal. It has to be personal. This was very helpful with stunning legal reform in Vermont being implemented in 2023.
My personal preference is to advocate for lasting legal reform the way New York state adoptee rights advocates and Vermont adoptee rights advocates have won legislative reforms. Those are two great success stories. Use the links to learn more about their lasting victories.

Remember, lasting change, good or bad, is always won by a group of committed warriors, in the truest sense. True warriors are those go into any “conflict” with the outcomes already decided in their minds with a clear strategy for victory.

Each of us can make a difference. Choose your battles and always remain focused on the larger goal. For me that remains permanent and lasting legal reform to end the injustice of outdated, harmful adoption laws that hide a person’s truth and deny them their original records.

And for adoptees who are working for change, I appreciate everything you can do this year if you have the time, energy, and good will. Good luck and make 2023 a great one!

No I will not share pictures to entertain you

Rudy Owens and his adoptive mother, 2008

Trends regarding adoptee rights advocacy come and go, and some stay and have lasting power. One I am seeing the past couple of days is promoting the importance of genetic closeness, ahead of National Adoption Month. Adult adoptees are showing photos of their birth kin they may know to show biological connections and to subvert what the month means to millions of adopted persons. I refuse to do that. I have several reasons I will share.

First, I refuse to be part of a spectacle for entertainment for others because of a broken and inequitable system. My severed connections are not for your pleasure. They demand collective actions by allies and political leaders to fix problems in order to support millions denied basic legal rights. More importantly, there are millions of adopted persons who may never meet their kin or ever see anyone who looks like them. This is spiritually painful to many of them, and it creates additional pain where there is a dark hole already.

Finally, this form of sharing allows us to ignore the greater and more important issues of finding solutions to overcome legal, cultural, and political barriers that prevent lasting reform. So yeah, count me out of another social media trend. I will be thinking about those adoptees who are of all ages and who are still denied knowledge of who they are and from whence they come.

For the record, when I launched my website for my memoir on the U.S. adoption system, I created an online gallery where I intentionally blacked out the identities of my biological and adoptive kin. It was my way of making clear my denied biological family connections will never be used as clickbait for media or anyone else for voyeuristic pleasure. I will not participate in this type of online bread and circus. Eventually I may share photos, but it will be purposeful so that it supports the larger goals of my efforts to restore adoptees’ legal rights.