This letter from Randall Terry is actually about a week old at this point. I've been holding onto this story, trying to understand Terry, but his hatred for his son is so alien to me that even as I sit here it makes me shake my head.
As much thinking as I've done about this piece, I realize finally that I can't even understand what could have prompted Randall Terry to react with such anger, such rage, and such incoherent rage. Terry treats this as a political assassination, but his target is Jamiel, his adopted son.
The 24 year old Jamiel Terry was paid what Randall Terry claims was about $5,000 dollars by OUT magazine to talk about being Randall Terry's gay son. The elder Terry has been an outspoken opponent of gay rights, most specifically of gay marriage, and I can understand why OUT magazine would want to talk to Jamiel about his relationship with his father.
However, Randall Terry's response to the article was swift and decisive. He widely released a letter in response to the article, which will hit stands on April 20.
After only two paragraphs (one of expressed sadness by Terry, and then one of quick praise of his son) Terry launches into an unflinching attack. He begins by attacking his son's background, pointing out that Jamiel was born into difficult circumstances and then insinuating that despite the deep effort that he put into the boy it was to late for Jamiel to be helped. Terry, playing the ever suffering father, laments that this article in OUT is only the latest in a string of behavior problems.
Of course, Jamiel isn't even competent to write his own article according to Terry. The editors of this magazine devoted to the homosexual agenda ghostwrote most of the article for his son to further the cause of homosexual civil rights.
Terry continues his verbal assault on his son throughout his letter. He accuses his son of factual mistakes and then dismisses any notion that homosexuality might be intrinsic. While talking about his son having sex with friends at home he likens his sons actions to abuse of those friends, and then apologizes to their parents. He announces his son's problems to the world, including a recent DWI and money problems that extend into writing bad checks and borrowing money.
Randall Terry can't even stop himself from attacking his son's religion. An apparently brief comment on Jamiel's Catholicism leads to veritable shouts of "YOU ARE NOT CATHOLIC!" His arguments are entirely fallacious though, although his son rejects papal authority and the Vatican's teachings on family issues, so do many others that call themselves Catholic. Mel Gibson comes to mind on that former part.
In the end though, everything turns back to Randall Terry himself. He feels betrayed because Jamiel sold him out by writing the article, and the reason that he won't let his son back into his home is because he can't be trusted not to talk about their private conversations. He paints a picture of himself as a kindly benevolent father waiting for his prodigal son to return to his loving arms after Jamiel attends a reorientation camp that he wants to attend, while it seems patently obvious that it is Randall's desire that Jamiel attend the camp, not Jamiel's.
Even this relatively long article can't cover all of the horrible things that Terry has to say about his son. No loving father could or should write something so virulently hateful and vicious about their own son. If anything this should be an obvious sign to everyone that these 'family' organizations really don't care about their families at all. They'd rather preach hate toward homosexuals than even hold their families together. It's times like this that I'm proud to be a gay non-Christian; the rank hypocrisy of the religious right is sickening.
St Matthew (Spherical Time)
