And I expressed mine. The "thought" was that if children were offended, then it was because they were taught to be overly sensitive by their parents. As the parent of a child who MIGHT be offended by the "He's adopted" line (and I have no idea, as she doesn't want to see the film) that means I have just been insulted, thank you very much. It insults my parenting. And THAT is rude. It implies that adoptive parents raise their children to be overly sensitive instead of teaching them that adoption is a positive thing, with all the good, loving thoughts that go with that. Which is what we do, by the way.
But we can send that message to our kids 24/7 and it will NOT shut out the backward, ignorant messages of society entirely. (the bad seed, blood will out, second best, etc.) And when a kid is sitting in a movie theatre with a room full of people cracking up at "He's adopted" line, then the message they get is not the warm, fuzzy one their parents have been sending to them all their lives. It's the nasty stereotypical negative ones they hear. LITERALLY hear as the laughter rings in their ears.
If I took a kid with Down Syndrome to see a movie and a joke was made at the expense of kids with DS, I would not be shocked to discover that line hurt the child, no matter how much of a positive image their parents had raised them with. If I took a Black child to a movie and the movie said to him (as children internalize these messages) that Black kids are born bad and the whole room laughed, then no matter how much pride he had been taught to have in his race, I'd be less than surprised if he was offended. If I took a homosexual 13 y.o. to a movie that joked about the inherent broken, flawed nature of gays and the laughter of the audience hit them hard, I wouldn't jump to the conclusion that their parents had raised them to be crybabies.
You can get one message from your family and quite another from society. That much is clear from the posts on this board. All I am asking is for ADULTS to put themselves in the position of an adopted child and realize that such comments can hurt terribly. It's simple empathy but it must be beyond the capacity of some. Yet it is how we evolve as a society.....or not.