By way of a morning after comment, on my post last night, A few preliminary notes on the attempted cooptation of the adoptee rights movement by Mr. Pertman and the EBD, I realize that while certainly implied throughout, I’ve failed to mention how Mr. Pertman’s work completely fails to take into account any concept of Class Bastard– the concept of Bastards as a class of people denied equality by state statute.

These are not individual or isolated personal circumstances of inequality, they represent denial of equal treatment under law to a class of people.

Likewise, any proposed solution or remedy working towards genuine equality and the restoration of our fundamental human rights must also be grounded in the restoration of that class of people’s rights, not merely some.

The ‘Bastard condition,’ those Bastardized by the state and statute cannot be corrected through ‘personal solutions’ nor subsets being granted mere privileges at the whim of the state as the Bastard standing next to the privileged are denied.

Such simply creates multiple tiers of those who as a class are still merely divided out into subsets granted or refused access to their authentic history, identity, and state produced paperwork, it would represent a failure to accomplish justice. (As we have already seen play out in many states, but perhaps most deserving of a prominent mention Illinois.)

Under such deform measure scenarios, the ultimate control over access is retained by the state and doled out according to whatever the most recent fashion of who is deserving or undeserving is determined, more often than not an arbitrary process with undependable outcomes.

The genuine Bastard rights movement does not seek to retain the role of the state as gatekeeper, but instead seeks to re-establish and enshrine the fundamental human right into law, ensuring predictable and equal treatment to all, a right we previously enjoyed until it was stripped of us state by state.

Over the years I’ve written many posts about our status as that of a class of people, I suppose it was such a bedrock assumption for me at this point that in writing my post last night, I failed to elaborate on what to me was simply obvious. But for the sake of readers, it’s probably critically important to go back and ensure that context is also explicitly applied.

Likewise, just as I’ve written so often about the Bastard condition as a class condition, I have also written repeatedly about what any social justice based  remedy (legislative or otherwise) must look like in practice.

So as but two of many posts I’ve written to that effect, see Bastard Access- either we all go together or we don’t go at all- “Nobody gets left behind. Or forgotten” and Adoptee Rights 101: Class Bastard and how to recognize a genuine adoptee rights bill.

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