We just happened to read of the NASA adoption stunt online, and we're hoping it's a hoax, because while April Fool's Day has passed, the "Adopt The Planet Earth" fundraising scheme is still in extremely poor taste.
We understand, dear NASA, that your astronauts may be brainiacs with their heads in the clouds, but you all have missed the mark with your quest to make money off the concept of adoptive placement.
For starters, it is illegal to ask for or receive money or gifts of value in exchange for adoption.
You, on the other hand, are auctioning off 64k fifty-five mile pieces of earth (or at least the bragging rights) to the highest bidders.Unlike a real adoption, in which a child gains a home and a family gains a child to which they have naming rights, in your "adoptions" only NASA stands to gain.
We get that it's for a good cause (and certainly, anybody who ever hoped to profit from an adoption had the same justification for their efforts.) We don't begrudge NASA anything.
But you have to have legal rights in order to place someone (or something) for adoption, and NASA, you clearly are not the legal parent of the planet earth, so what you are proposing would actually be more of a blackmarket adoption.
Beyond that, however, there is the greater problem of exploiting the process by which parentless children acquire loving homes, and that's what really annoys us.
We get that you meant for your latest fundraiser to be all in fun, since the donors willing to contribute will not actually acquire anything but a paper certificate for the plot of earth you "sell" them.
And yet, in most parts of the globe, real adoptees are still denied even so much as a copy of their own original birth certificate, so this additionally adds insult to injury.
Why not alternatively propose that your supporters "marry" the earth? Or buy it? (What makes "adoption" the pivotal idea, here-- especially if the planet belongs to all of us already?)
Kids who have been adopted already have to overcome the indignities of growing up in a society that thinks it's okay to equate the means by which they were adopted to the adoption of stray animals, the adoption of rubber ducks, and even the adoption of public highways.
Yet for parents who have loving placed their children for adoption amidst the most painful of life circumstances, for parents who have adopted and struggle to assure their children that adoption is a forever thing and not just a temporary stunt or the punchline to a joke, cheapening the significance of adoption by using it to describe anything less sacred than a child's transfer from one family to another is insensitive at best and cruel at worst.
Please reconsider the appropriateness of your quest to solicit donations for your cause by selling pretend adoptions. There are plenty of other ways to encourage the public to contribute.
Doing so at the expense of the world's adoptees and the families who love them is unacceptable.
The NASA adoption stunt, "Adopt the Planet Earth," may have seemed like a clever concept to space-lovers, but in the light of day, it's more like a flaming meteor--one with the power to do unanticipated damage to adoptees, who deserve to have every reason to shoot for the stars.
We understand, dear NASA, that your astronauts may be brainiacs with their heads in the clouds, but you all have missed the mark with your quest to make money off the concept of adoptive placement.
For starters, it is illegal to ask for or receive money or gifts of value in exchange for adoption.
You, on the other hand, are auctioning off 64k fifty-five mile pieces of earth (or at least the bragging rights) to the highest bidders.Unlike a real adoption, in which a child gains a home and a family gains a child to which they have naming rights, in your "adoptions" only NASA stands to gain.
We get that it's for a good cause (and certainly, anybody who ever hoped to profit from an adoption had the same justification for their efforts.) We don't begrudge NASA anything.
Beyond that, however, there is the greater problem of exploiting the process by which parentless children acquire loving homes, and that's what really annoys us.
And yet, in most parts of the globe, real adoptees are still denied even so much as a copy of their own original birth certificate, so this additionally adds insult to injury.
Why not alternatively propose that your supporters "marry" the earth? Or buy it? (What makes "adoption" the pivotal idea, here-- especially if the planet belongs to all of us already?)
Kids who have been adopted already have to overcome the indignities of growing up in a society that thinks it's okay to equate the means by which they were adopted to the adoption of stray animals, the adoption of rubber ducks, and even the adoption of public highways.
Yet for parents who have loving placed their children for adoption amidst the most painful of life circumstances, for parents who have adopted and struggle to assure their children that adoption is a forever thing and not just a temporary stunt or the punchline to a joke, cheapening the significance of adoption by using it to describe anything less sacred than a child's transfer from one family to another is insensitive at best and cruel at worst.
Please reconsider the appropriateness of your quest to solicit donations for your cause by selling pretend adoptions. There are plenty of other ways to encourage the public to contribute.
Doing so at the expense of the world's adoptees and the families who love them is unacceptable.
The NASA adoption stunt, "Adopt the Planet Earth," may have seemed like a clever concept to space-lovers, but in the light of day, it's more like a flaming meteor--one with the power to do unanticipated damage to adoptees, who deserve to have every reason to shoot for the stars.
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