Contests and Censorship

UPDATE: After serious consideration, we have decided to cancel our Adoption Blogs by Moms – 2012 contest. Our Top 25 program is meant to celebrate, connect, and support mom bloggers. Following some feedback from participants in our 2011 contest, we decided to make this year's Top 25 more inclusive. In doing so, we unknowingly stepped into a very sensitive issue and debate, and we apologize to all the moms who have been offended, no matter what your position on adoption is. We're committed to finding a way to give all parties in the Adoption Triad a voice on Circle of Moms. If we run a Top 25 Adoption Blogs in the future, we'll consult with mom bloggers in each part of the Adoption Triad on how to create a supportive contest where all bloggers would feel welcome and respected by Circle of Moms and by all participants. We appreciate the time and energy every participant put into this contest during the past week, and we sincerely regret that we can't reward those efforts in the way we had planned to when we launched the contest.


That was the message posted yesterday where the Circle of Moms contest used to be. What a shame. It's truly sad when adult women can't be adult enough to handle being in the same silly contest with women who have a different viewpoint. What Circle of Moms did was censorship pure and simple. A few people didn't like the fact that an adoptee and a natural mom made it to the top 2 spots in the competition and didn't like what those blogs were about so instead of allowing people to read, think, learn and decide for themselves they just decided to pull the plug. 

Unfortunately, the voices of adoptees and natural mothers are shut down on a regular basis. We get blocked from Facebook pages, have our comments deleted from blogs and we're banned from certain websites. What the people doing the blocking, banning and deleting haven't realized is, their attempts at censorship are futile. They're attempting to stop the flow of information and ideas that they don't like but now that so many of us have come out of the closet and are speaking up, now that we have the internet to share that information, we won't be stopped. It doesn't matter if they keep playing their childish games, the information is going to continue to be shared and more people will learn about what really happens in the adoption industry.

So, congrats to Amanda and Claudia, the top 2 in the Top 25 Adoption Blogs by Moms. You're both amazing.