***

Disney’s “Stitch.”

Instantly recognizable as a “fellow traveler” to Bastard moviegoers and adopted “abominations” everywhere.

Not only does he hail from the one and only Disney movie to prominently feature a social worker, alongside the perennial Disney themes of:

• being orphaned, and of impending potential family disruption,
• the importance of family preservation, (even when families are self- found, “little, and broken” they are nonetheless worthy of being deemed “still good.”)
• how even those deprived of their history can come to create their own intentional forms of family, and be reunited with their Ohana of origin
• and how eventually, in movies anyway, the lead always comes to rediscover their previously obscured roots, (Bastards make the best plot twists!)

but Stitch, Lilo, and Nani also have a very great deal to say about notions of leaving people behind:

“Ohana means family, family means nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten.”

Widsom so simple, children have no trouble comprehending it.

Unfortunately, out here in the non-animated world, it’s a lesson all too many adults have yet to wrap their heads around.

***

Marley/Bastardette has written what I consider one of the most important posts on the Bastard condition I’ve seen in a long time.

In light of how some in the adoption blogosphere have gotten their knickers in a collective twist over both the California disaster and the NCFA piece (which simply is not news, except in that Bill Pierce is no doubt rolling over in his grave in light of how much psuedo-”openness” the new NCFA has come to embrace,) Marley brings up what is completely obvious to Bastards, that “reformers” and industry voices such as NCFA have far more in common with one another than either do with any genuine effort which has actually opened records and improved the lives for adopted people.

CARE, the Evan B. Donaldson Institute, and NCFA all have more in common with one another than any of them have to do with us.

Each of these, despite any “openness” language they may come to employ (usually grounded firmly in a cynical pragmatism and industry survival instinct), are ultimately willing to trade away access for some. An often undetermined number or percentage are written off as expendable, or “not politically expedient.”

Bastards on the other hand, leave no one behind.

Speaking as one of those left behind in an earlier Ohio deform effort, and as a black holed Bastard, let me add my voice to Marley’s, genuine Bastard-centric efforts leave no one behind.

No number or percentage should be left back or “forgotten.” Living daily, as one myself, allow me to tell you from firsthand experience, it’s inexcusable.

We will never trade away the person standing next to us. Any notion of “we’ll come back and open those up later” is failure. (Even the briefest study of political history will teach that lesson quickly enough.) We understand, either we all go together or we don’t go at all.

None of the adoption deformers speak for us.

In any case, go, read, and learn:

SWAPMEETIN’: NCFA, REFORMISTS, AND BASTARDS

Marley’s piece from where I sit is a mandatory Bastard backgrounder and has everything to say about where we find ourselves today.

(And ’cause I’m a space geek, enjoy a Black hole picture post.)