Randall Terry
Randall Terry, you reap what you sow. He just did a live interview on CNN talking about how homosexuality is a ’sexual addiction,’ and how his son has taken thousands of dollars from OUT magazine (he was actually paid the standard $5000 fee) to promote the ‘homosexual agenda.’ Along with coming out as gay, the article was about growing up with this founder of Operation Rescue, notorious anti-abortionista, manic and rabidly heterosexual family values spokesman, given to terrorist acts such as mailing a dead fetus to President Clinton to blocking the doorways of abortion clinics with his wiry and angry white guy with an afro body, who is also an outspoken lunatic in the war against same sex marriage.
What is the homosexual agenda? That mysterious agenda for marriage and equality, freedom and fairness, stuff like that. I am not really sure when being an American, with all my rights and freedoms intact, the same as all other Americans, became an ‘agenda,’ but some would call it that I suppose.
I am glad for Jamiel Terry. To find the guts to stand up to your father when he is a frothing at the mouth, seething, pissed off, straight as hell homophobe, and defend yourself publicly, that must be some scary ass shit, and it obviously isn’t about money. It is about proclaiming the truth. Having to grow up within the blinding ray of hatred, is especially searing when it is coming from your father. It is a wonder that it didn’t stunt his growth, like second hand smoke or malnutrition or one of the other multitude offhand offenses of neglectful parenting.
Jamiel is a handsome and endearing young man. His revelatory stance is a testament to courage in the face of ‘family values.’ What his story contains is the bitter lesson that no matter how ‘good’ a family man Randall Terry proclaimed himself to be, the truth is that his son is gay. No matter how many times he is told that he will be dead at 42, that he is a sex addict, that he is condemning himself to a life of pain and immorality, he is still gay, and nothing will change that. Which proves, nothing is wrong with it. That none of the threats are true. There is no doorway to physically block here, no awful thing to put in the mail that will make them true.
I believe that the son speaks for so many sons and daughters out there, living out this nightmare in seclusion. When your parents, responsible for telling you who you are, eventually do not accept who you are, who are you then? After years of cautious shipbuilding to which afterwards if you do not turn out ‘right,’ to be unceremoniously launched and forever lost at sea, must likely be the worst kind of cut.
I don’t have much power to help, except to say that it is ok. That you are still you, no matter what anyone says, and whoever that is, whoever you are, is just fine. Sail on sailor. The sea, the world - is yours.