Anti-Gay Crusaders and Their Gay Kids

A recent article in Out magazine by 24-year-old Jamiel Terry about growing up gay has created a bit of a furor lately. Out often publishes these little snippets ... I suppose to give questioning kids flipping furtively through the magazine at Borders a bit of hope. But this particular essay is different, because Jamiel is the adopted son of Randal Terry, rabid anti-gay crusader and head of Operation Rescue. What was his childhood like?

Growing up in my house was anything but boring. And it was made even more “interesting” because from a very early age I knew I was different. When I was 4 my favorite female was Miss Piggy. That alone was probably not much of a giveaway, but my soft voice and my mannerisms turned out to be signs that I was gay. However, when you grow up in a house where to be the thing you are is an abominable sin, you tend to try to shed those behaviors. I would try to be more masculine in every way I could. My father would rarely say something derogatory about gays around my mom or my sisters, but he would around our male friends and to me. I guess it was the usual stuff you hear, but it hurt me sometimes, and I would ask him not to say those things; I felt that for Christians, it’s not right to mock people, even in their sin.

Randall Terry freaked out in a response published in The Washington Times. In it, the elder Terry attacks his son--for breaking familial trust by airing the family's dirty secrets for $5,000, for insinuating that his son is a sexual predator who lured his friends to the Terry household to have sex with them ("I am grieved for those boys. Their parents believed their sons were safe at our home--so did I. I was wrong"), for being so brain-washed (presumably by the homosexual army), that he can't remember when he was adopted. Randall Terry gives up his son ("He is no longer welcome in my home"), having lost him to the homosexual movement as their latest "trophy". Terry ends the article by informing us what the Out article didn't mention, that Jamiel has had and continues to have a troubled life. But that must be because of his perverse lifestyle, right, Randall? It couldn't be because he grew up in a household where a part of his core identity was considered an aberration, a sin, a scourge. Anti-gay crusaders like Randall Terry never notice the planks in their eyes.

... From Andrew Sullivan's website:

Christian right leader, Randall Terry, has a troubled gay son. Dick Cheney has an untroubled gay daughter. Anti-gay crusader Pete Knight has a gay son. Charles Socarides, the chief proponent of reparative therapy for homosexuals, has a gay son. Phyllis Shlafly has a gay son. When will these people begin to understand that being gay is not a "choice"; it's a fact of human nature?

Posted by Jason at April 14, 2024 02:55 PM