Tag: Tokenizing

Greg Louganis Adoptee

Greg Louganis and his biological father, Fouvale Lutu, in 2017

I learned about this adoptee from a favorite adoptee blogger, Tony Corsentino, in a recent blog LINK>Beautiful Man. I personally LOVE reunion stories.

I’ll admit I really didn’t know anything about Louganis’ Olympic career. In 2017, People magazine wrote about his reunion with his paternal family – LINK>How He Found His Birth Father by Patrick Gomez. Louganis told People – “I needed to know I wasn’t a throw-away child.” Like many adoptees (my mom included) being adopted filled him with questions about his birth parents. Being told his biological parents had been young when he was born and had no choice in giving him up for adoption, he says “helped ease the question of whether I was loved.”

Louganis’s birth parents met in Hawaii, but his biological mother moved to San Diego while pregnant and Louganis entered the foster care system at birth. At 9 months, he was adopted by Southern California-based Frances and Peter Louganis, who were unable to have biological children. The couple had also adopted a daughter two years before and were always open with their kids about their family history. 

Among his biggest fans was Fouvale Lutu, who for years had quietly followed his son’s life from afar. When an endorsement event for Speedo brought Louganis to Honolulu in 1984, Lutu decided it was time to meet his first-born son. “One of the hosts came up to me and said, ‘Your father’s here.’ And I said, ‘My father’s in San Diego,’ ” recalls Louganis. Then he said, ‘No. Your biological father.’ “

“It was interesting because as the years progressed,” Louganis says, “I saw a lot of similar traits in him that I saw in myself.” He adds, “when I did the DNA testing and found out how we were connected, it validated everything that I knew in my heart.” Through the DNA test, he also discovered the identity of his birth mother. 

Back to Tony Corsentino, his adoptive parents extolled Louganis as a role model for him. This caused him to realize he had resented Greg Louganis as a child. In maturity, he realized that his parents’ tokenizing of Louganis as what adoptees can achieve was mixed in with his resentment. Then, he realized that he would have needed to be able to theorize his adoption in terms that separated his own self and his questions and needs as an adoptee, from his adoptive parents, their motives and their needs as adopters. The idea of adoptee-in-reunion erasing everything that does not support the dominant conception of adoption as child welfare through family creation. The very idea of finding and reclaiming one’s roots.

A bit more about erasure from Tony – the term is a cultural project requiring many interconnecting parts: laws, institutions, ideas. Denial of citizenship to intercountry adoptees is one manifestation of it. Also, adopting children out of their communities; punitive, draconian terminations of parental rights through our systems of family policing; sealing of birth records. More broadly still: ideas of adoption as child rescue, and the presumption of adoptee gratitude, function to enmesh everyone in the project of erasure. Against such a polymorphous force, resistance takes correspondingly many forms. Greg Louganis’s willingness to talk about his reunion and his reassertion of his ancestral identity through inscribing and adorning his body with native tattoos are potent acts of anti-erasure, no matter how personal their meaning for him.

I love reunion stories because I had to make a determined effort to reclaim my original roots for my own self.

Like Many, Learning As I Go

Clearly, I did not for see all of the criticism that I was getting myself into but I did note that it was “a difficult topic to discuss in a politically correct manner”, so I did have an inkling. Five women expressed a problem with yesterday’s blog. There were literally hundreds of comments posted on the question thread. My blog yesterday attempted to acknowledge I am the product of a different time than the one I am living in now. I also posted a link to that blog in my all things adoption group. This caused my blog to have 10 times more views than any I have ever written here but no comments were left on the blog itself that I know of today.

Without apologizing for viewing the culture I was raised in positively, and I do continue to raise my own children within the same kind of family structure, I was shocked by the accusations of homophobia made against me within my all things adoption group simply for believing in the value of that culture as applied to child-rearing, a culture that includes both male and female role models. Please note – this does not exclude same sex couples but those do need to include extended family to provide examples of each gender, for a child growing up within that culture.

Needless to say, the increase in young people who refuse to embrace a gender identity (non-binary) is a trend for humanity that I don’t expect to end. It is a good response. Making a significant point about how gender is actually a meaningless distinction except in actual procreation. I completely agree with that stance. I have enough life experience to know that sex is sex, regardless of the forms it takes, though rape is something else entirely and about power over another human being. I am also aware that many young people do not intend to parent or have children. Many of my friends, who are in my same age group, lament not expecting to enjoy having grandchildren. Just as with abortion and now the pandemic, these are circumstances that have pushed back concerns about over-population.

Certainly, my family and my dearest friends include people who identify as gay and they are all loved by me just as any other family member or friend is. I see their humanity and accept them as they present themselves to be. For that, I was told to STOP tokenizing my gay family and friends. You sound like the obviously racist people who say “I can’t be racist, I have a black friend.” That was not my intent but I know, life is like this now. Sometimes we can’t undo perceptions, regardless of where our heart actually is. I accept the impossibility of doing so. Social media is a difficult place to even attempt that.

It was also said of this blog that on the whole the writing was disjointed and convoluted making it difficult to discern its intentions.

So I will make clear – my intention regarding the adoption related values most important to me – that were raised by this question that was asked – What are your thoughts about the Buttigieg’s impending adoption?

Adoption causes trauma by separating a baby from its gestational mother. Surrogacy does the same thing.

I support family preservation. This includes financial and emotional support, so that mothers can raise their own children. If a child does need the care of people who they are not born of, for all of the reasons usually given including abuse or neglect, this can be provided without changing their name and parentage from that shown on their original birth certificate. Birth identity matters.

In the case of the Buttigiegs their intention is to remain anonymous. I doubt that is going to succeed in the long run, though actual results will be the proof. The press will turn over every stone they try to set in order to reveal the child’s origins.

In a Washington Post article it was written – “The couple, who have been married for three years, had been trying to adopt for a year, taking part in parenting workshops. They were on lists that would allow them to receive a baby who had been abandoned or surrendered at short notice and also were seeking to be matched with a prospective mother.”

So to be clear, I like the former mayor, now cabinet member, Pete Buttigieg well enough, what little I actually know about him. But the language used in the couple’s announcement included lots of red flags for anyone interested in adoption reform. And the fact that they’re pursuing domestic infant adoption is precisely what I object to the most.

Research indicates that children with same sex parents have strengths and unique challenges. I found this article in an attempt to add some reality to my own thinking – “Same Sex Parents and Their Children“. It notes that between 1 and 9 million children in the United States have at least one parent who is lesbian or gay. There are approximately 594,000 same-sex partner households, according to the 2000 Census, and there are children living in approximately 27 percent of those households.

Adoptees definitely have unique traumas and I do have concerns about this particular couple’s ability create a totally positive outcome, from the trauma they will cause by the adoption of a baby. I would have the same concerns regardless of the sexual orientation of an adoptee’s parents.