Free The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant by Dan Savage Page B

confused?
    Jill explained that women who place their children for adoption usually have a lot going for them:
    “They've imagined futures for themselves, and a child doesn't fit into their plans at the moment. Playing a role in selecting a family for their child is powerful. The woman doesn't feel that she abandoned her child, or acted irresponsibly. Open adoption is about honesty, and about what's best for birth moms and their children.
    “Open adoption means ongoing contact between birth mom and child, and between birth and adoptive families. Openness means no lies, and an adopted child who doesn't grow up wondering who his ‘real’ mom or dad is, or why they gave him up. If the child has a question about why his birthparents couldn't raise him, he can ask his birth mom.”
    The agency believed open adoption was the best option foradoptive couples, too, though not everyone in Lloyd Center's conference room seemed convinced.
    Adoptive couples were the only people who lost something, and what they lost was a measure of control and autonomy. “ Traditional” closed adoption only came into being about fifty years ago, when adoption laws were rewritten all over the country. What had been open (and in many cases informal) arrangements were regulated and “closed,” with records being sealed to protect adopted children from the stigma of illegitimacy and single pregnant women from the stigma of premarital sex. Even now, when an adoption was finalized, the court permanently sealed the child's original birth certificate and issued a new one, with the adoptive parents' names listed on it as “father and mother.” This was how it was done everywhere, even in progressive Oregon.
    (“I want to be listed as the father,” Terry whispered. “You're the one with birthin' hips.” If we'd been alone somewhere and Terry had taken my hips in vain, I'd have punched him in the shoulder. I wasn't sure how hitting would play in a room crawling with social workers who'd be assessing our fitness to parent, so I had to kick Terry under the table instead.)
    Closed adoption also provided adoptive parents with something not every adoptive couple wanted though some did. Closed adoption made it possible for adoptive parents to pretend the child they'd adopted was their own biological child, and for many years adoptions were arranged to match the looks of adoptive parents and their adopted children to facilitate this pretense. Closed adoption made allowances for lies.
    Needless to say, this was not something Terry and I could have taken advantage of even in a closed adoption. If we got our families and friends to play along, we could fool the kid for a few years, or longer if we home-schooled, but even the kid would catch on sooner or later. Two men can't make a baby.
    But I could take comfort in knowing there was one fundamentalist Christian out there who thought Terry and I should be able to raise our children believing they popped out of our butts. I was interviewing a woman in Seattle who was trying to get books about gays and lesbians out of the schools. She felt homosexuality was something that only parents should discuss with their children, and that it was up to parents whether a child ever evenlearned that such things as homosexuals even existed. I pointed out that she was arguing for the right of parents to keep their children ignorant; she responded brightly, “That's right, I am. That's my right as a parent. My children shouldn't know things I don't want them to know.”
    I told her I was about to become a parent. Should I have the right to raise my child in complete and total ignorance of “such things” as heterosexuals?
    “Oh, yes. You see, this isn't a gay or straight issue, or a Christian issue,” she said, reaching for common ground. “This is about parents' rights. If you have children, you should raise them how you see fit. If you don't want your children to know about heterosexuality, you shouldn't have to teach them