Bastard Nation
North American adoptee advocacy and support organization
Bastard Nation is a North American adult adoptee political advocacy and support organization. It was founded in 1996 by denizens of the Usenet newsgroup alt.adoption Shea Grimm, Damsel Plum, Marley Greiner and Lainie Petersen. The original intent of the organization was to support adult adoptees in gaining access to their original birth certificates as a civil right, rather than as a vehicle for facilitating a search, which had been the aim of prior open records organizations. It is also distinguished from search-and-reconnection focused organizations in that it supports the full spectrum of the adult adoptee experience, including adoptees who do not wish to search and adoptees whose reconnections were a bad experience.
Besides advocating adult adoptee access to original birth certificates, Bastard Nation also launches campaigns against negative stereotypes of adoption and adoptees.
North American adoptee birth certificates were originally sealed only to non-family members in the early 20th century but after World War II most states sealed adoptee birth certificates permanently to all parties involved: the adoptee, the adoptive parents and the birthparents.
The group has been successful in getting several states in the United States to approve legislation to open sealed records, for example in Oregon by Ballot Measure 58, described in the book Adoption Politics: Bastard Nation & Ballot Initiative 58 by E. Wayne Carp (2004). They have members throughout the United States, Canada and the world.
The name is a reference to the fact that most adopted children were born illegitimate, hence are literally bastards. The term bastard is employed both for shock value, and in an effort to reclaim the term for common usage (as was done by the organization Queer Nation with the word queer).
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Bastard Nation” is north American adoptee advocacy and support organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Bastard, Nation and North, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “north American adoptee advocacy and support organization” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4868230. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996 and 2004.
Later summaries often reconcile disputed chronology or motive more neatly than the contemporary record permits. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
- Locating named record creators
Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Bastard Nation”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Bastard Nation primary sources, Bastard Nation archive and Bastard research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Bastard Nation”?
- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
- Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Bastard Nation” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.