I know the tittle is a bit weird, but this was the best way I found to translate what was said. Obligatory apologies for bad grammar and/or spelling. English is not my first language.
I'm M44, my husband is M40 (been married for 20 years, together for 22) and our adoptive son is M24. He's black and we're not. I'm only mentioning this because it's relevant to the story later. This does not take place in the US.
Let me give a little bit of background to the situation. About 19 years ago, me and my husband had been driving on a highway, back from a small vacation, when along a particularly long stretch of road (absolutely no buildings around, only a ton of grass and hills as far as the eye could see), we spotted a little boy just sitting by the side of the road.
Like I mentioned, there was nothing around for miles, and no cars close to where the boy was, so we decided to stop and see if everything was ok. When we got closer to the boy, let's call him Jason (fake name), it was very easy to see he was dirty and malnourished since the only thing he had on were some diapers. He was so small it didn't look like he could be older than 3 (later found out he was actually 5).
We asked him why he was alone, and he told us that "Mommy and daddy put him here and told him to wait." There was no cell signal in the area, so we did the sensible thing and brought him back to town to the nearest police station.
To make a long story short, CPS was called, we discovered his parents were some druggies that were on the run from a felony. The only other relative Jason had was his grandmother, who was very mentally ill and couldn't take care of him, and we felt bad. He went into foster care soon after, but we felt bad for the kid and kept in touch with his case worker.
I had (still do) an extremely well paying job at the time, and could easily afford a decent lifestyle for a small family, so after a few months of discussions between ourselves, the case worker, and some bureaucracy, we formally adopted Jason.
Now onto the situation. About 3 years ago, Jason's parents were released from prison on parole. They contacted him not long after in hopes of reconnecting. Prior to that they'd sent him a few odd letter here or there, but nothing really substantial.
At first he was hesitant to talk to them, but ended up caving and meeting them for lunch one day. I'll admit that a part of me was a bit jealous and apprehensive of what could happen. But I could see that it really was something that my son wanted to do, so for his sake I swallowed those and supported him through it.
It wasn't very long, about 3 months I think, that he started to pull away from us. At first I chalked it up to him being excited to actually talk to his bio-parents after so long. Talk about what had been going on in his life, spend some time with them, etc... It started to bother me when he'd cancel plans with us last minute because "mom had an emergency" or "dad really needs me to help him with something today" or whatever other excuse he could come up with. He used to come over to our house at least once a week, call every day or so, but now we were lucky if he even came by that month. Again, I thought that was just temporary, that he was just excited and soon enough he'd start spending some time with us again.
We were overjoyed when he invited us over to diner one night. It was supposed to be a family gathering, us and his bio-parents and his wife (girlfriend at the time). I wasn't exactly keen on meeting the people that had left my son for the dead on the side of the road, but decided to give them the benefit of the doubt, thinking maybe they'd atoned and changed. Besides, he's our son and we love him. We had to at least try.
To say the diner was a disaster is an understatement. His bio-mom was extremely rude to my and my husband the entire night, making passive aggressive homophobic and racist remarks every chance she got. His father was much the same. It all came to head when she straight up called us the f-word and threw a glass at my husband. A screaming match followed and we left soon after.
The next day Jason apologized profusely the next day and promised they'd never do something like that again. I told him neither me and my husband wanted to have anything to do with them, and would appreciate if he understood that. He seemed to, but continued to pull away the next few months.
And that leads to what happened last week. Jason proposed to his girlfriend about 9 months back, and has been preparing for the wedding since. Of course we were overjoyed for him. But a few months went by and no invitation came. Every time we asked Jason would say they hadn't been sent out yet and changed the subject. Well, last week my husband saw a twitter post from one of Jason's friends, his groomsman, that went a few weeks back, with the invitation in hands. We confronted Jason about it the next time he came over, only for him to drop the bomb on us that we hadn't been invited.
We asked why, and he said "his parents" didn't want us there and wouldn't come if we did. I was fucking furious. I asked him how could he choose those pieces of trash over us? Why they were so important? What did we do to deserve this kind of treatment?
His answer? "They understand me better. They're my people."
At this point my husband was crying, asking how could he do this? I've only ever been truly angry a few times in life, and this moment managed to top all of them. I threw him out right then and there and told him to never come back. That he wasn't our son anymore. I spent the rest of the day hugging my husband and trying to calm him down.
The next day I canceled everything we'd paid for the wedding, which was basically everything important, even the ones we couldn't get a refund on. Of course Jason had the gall to call and scream at me, asking how I could do that to him, where would he find replacements for a wedding that was supposed to happen only a few months from now? I told him I didn't give a shit and said "Maybe you should ask those two leeches you call parents for some help."
19 years. 19 FUCKING YEARS of my goddamn life spent raising and loving a kid that I considered my own son, only to be treated like garbage. Giving blood, sweat and tears, so he would have a good life, all the love we could possibly give, and that's what we get as a reward.
As for why I'm asking if I'm the AH, some people have been calling and messaging us (mostly Jason's friends and a few of our family members) calling us heartless and monsters for doing what we did to him. And that's honestly got me questioning if I went a bit too far in anger. After all, parents are supposed to love unconditionally, right? But if so, how do we ever get over something like this? How can we deal with this feeling of betrayal? Are we justified in feeling like that?
So, AITA?
Edit: I've added a comment for further clarification of a few points I've seen asked in the comments and my PM's. Please refer to that if you have any questions.
Edit 2: I'm seeing quite a few racist comments in this post, and to the people that are making them, I have this to say: fuck you. Fuck off with that rethoric. I do not appreciate it, and would rather if you guys left.