Posted on 04/09/2004 6:26:21 PM PDT by scripter
I am still in a state of shock; I have been grieving for days. My son, Jamiel Terry, was paid $5,000 by Out magazine (to appear April 20, 2004, on newsstands) to write a story about being Randall Terry's homosexual son. I pray my following words help other grieving parents and serve as a warning to moms and dads of small children to be unflinchingly and unashamedly diligent to protect their children from predators, and bring a reality check to those exploiting my son.
First of all, I love my son. Jamiel is incredibly gifted. He is articulate and handsome. He sings like an angel, he plays the piano, he's a great cook, and he's a great debater. He would make a powerful lawyer and a formidable politician. People like him. I love him. I've poured 16 years of my life into him.
In March of 1988, my then-wife and I took Jamiel in as a foster child when he was 8 years old. We also took in his baby sister (almost 3 years old)) and their older sister (12 years old). We adopted him and his younger sister when he was nearly 15 and she was 9. He came to us as a deeply troubled boy, from a very dark home. He was literally born in jail.
Tragically, by the time we got him as a foster child, he had already learned a lifestyle of deceit from his surroundings and had been a victim of crimes and treacheries that would mar him for life. I knew of some of those things when we got him and have learned more over the years. My hope was that by providing a loving, safe home, his life would be spared the path it would inevitably take if he remained in those surroundings. Unfortunately, my hopes and prayers were not realized.
My son's teen years became a mixed stream of happy times mingled with half-truths, dishonesty and a double life. His behavior grew worse and worse in college, culminating with the story in Out magazine.
For the uninformed, Out magazine specializes in bringing homosexuals "out of the closet." Out is committed to the homosexual agenda – homosexual marriage, special "civil rights" for homosexuals, promoting the fallacy that their sexual activities are normal and even laudable. Their agenda is shameless. My son was offered $5,000 to "write" a story about me and his life with me and my family. However, much of the story was written by Out's editor who put words in my son's mouth to accomplish the magazine's agenda.
For me, the most horrifying part of the story is my son's admission: "I did have numerous sexual encounters with my friends, usually during sleepovers at my parents' house" and "I was home from boarding school in my old bedroom at my parents' house in Windsor, N.Y., where my friend 'Johnny' and I had just finished fooling around ... we had been having sex for ages. ..."
I am so grieved and sorry for those boys and their parents. Those parents trusted us; they believed their sons were safe at our home – so had I. I was wrong. I still am in a state of shock. Please, parents, learn from this tragedy.
Frankly, so much of the story is inaccurate (times, dates, events) it would take too much space to correct it. But worse yet is that the picture the story paints of my son is based in fraud.
For example, the story states, "I was baptized Catholic and raised Protestant, and I later returned to the Roman Catholic Church." This is not true. Jamiel has never been confirmed; he does not believe in nor go to confession; he does not believe in many Catholic dogmas; He rejects papal authority and Catholic teaching on family issues.
The story states: "My father seems to believe that the fact that I'm an adopted child may help explain why I'm gay – not because of the adoption process itself but perhaps because of things that my have occurred before I was adopted at the age of 5." As I stated, Jamiel was adopted when he was nearly 15, not 5. To gloss over the tragic events and surroundings Jamiel was rescued from at age 8 is deceitful. (Social Services took the children because of prostitution, drugs and deeds committed against them.) Many homosexuals want to ignore the causal links to their sexual addiction; they want us to believe their homosexuality is genetic, not behavioral. They're "made this way."
The story stated, "My father is still trying to get me to go to a three-month retreat to be 'delivered' from homosexuality." This is also not true. Jamiel has repeatedly asked me to pay for him to go to "Love in Action," which offers sound clinical, in-patient therapy to those who want freedom – and they have a great success rate with homosexuals. Even after the article was done, he asked me to help. I have offered to pay for the in-patient care, and the offer still stands.
Probably the most painful part for me as a dad is that my son prostituted my name for $5,000: He sold out our family's privacy and private discussions for cold cash. Can you imagine a family member doing that to you?
He knows that the only reason Out, and now CNN, (and God knows who else before it's over) want to talk with him is because he's "Randall Terry's son." He knows he is going to get his 15 minutes of fame because he's the adopted son of a high profile Christian leader who has fought against homosexual marriage.
Adding pain to pain, he told CNN and a journalist from the Washington Post that he is no longer welcome in my home because he is a homosexual. That is not true. I have had him in my home for many days after knowing he was a homosexual.
But when I saw the Out article, I went to Charlotte, N.C., (where he is now) to tell him I love him, and how hurt I was that he betrayed our families privacy, and that he was not welcome in my home right now – not because of his homosexuality, but because he could sell us out again. At any point, he could come for a holiday, make mental notes and find another buyer for another story. I have a great wife, a teenage daughter and two small boys; I will not let that type of intrusion happen again.
My son is being paraded around as the latest homosexual "trophy" that had the guts to "come out." What they aren't telling you – and this grieves me to my core – is that by anyone's standard – homosexual or heterosexual – my son's life is in shambles. He was recently arrested for DWI; he is knowingly writing bad checks on a closed bank account; he dropped out of school; he doesn't have a job (and refuses to get one); he bounces from house to house living off other people; he's racked-up huge bills for friends and family that he cannot pay; he's been taken to court by former friends to get him to pay money he owed them; he's lied to his friends, telling them his "famous dad" was going to send him money to pay for his debts (I get calls or e-mails from college friends looking for money); he has "borrowed" money from countless numbers of my friends; he has a trail of wrecked friendships and family relationships because of deceit, money fraud and crossed boundaries – a mirror image of the home he was in from birth to 8.
I am a father in anguish; my son is a young man in crisis who needs intervention and therapy, not heady interviews with CNN. And Out magazine is despicable for their participation in a sham and exploiting my son for their own political agenda. If my son is their latest "hero," we should wonder how many more of their homosexual leaders and trophies that they present as "model citizens" have lives that are this unraveled.
Let all who read the Out story, or any other that spins off of it, know that the story about my son is laced with fraud and deceit from beginning to end. And please pray for my son's redemption, and pray for our family's healing.
I think Randall Terry is right though ---- I think most homosexuals really don't choose to be that and they aren't born that way either --- something happens to them very early in their lives, often something the parents may never know about --- sexual abuse, but maybe other factors too. It seems to me that many lesbians talk about physical and emotional abuse very early in their lives.
This is not intended as a criticism of you or Sinkspur, but personally, I always look at it as a red flag when I find that the homosexual and abortion activist groups are taking the same position on a subject as a conservative. In such instances, one has to wonder if the conservative has not had the wool pulled over his eyes by the Machievellian tactics of the leftists. Even the best intentioned and most principled among us can, from time to time, find ourselves manipulated into becoming useful to the left.
I do not find homosexuals threatening or repugnant. I view them pretty much with neutrality. I don't think the average homosexual is Machiavellian. I do find the manner in which they're treated by most social conservatives to be appalling, as well as counter-productive. That's why I'm frequently on here criticizing the bellicostity and denigration that some Freepers direct towards homosexuals.
Maybe it's tough love? Randall Terry has a full schedule and I don't see him milking this.
It probably is worthy of observation, however what you fail to recognize is that by publishing this article, Randall Terry put the focus on himself and opened himself to criticism. And now he's being criticized. How do you think it's unfair that he's coming under scrutiny when he invited it upon himself?
And let's be clear. This story isn't so much about Randall Terry's son as much as it is "How could my son do this to me?" Pretty self-centered if you ask me.
I don't think anyone has given the kid a free pass. But if his father mimic's his child's behavior in some kind of bizarre retaliation, it creates a neverending cycle, doesn't it?
Comely twenty-year old females will do that, won't they?
Soliciting money for a half-million dollar house (his bookeeper's tap-dancing notwithstanding) may be the Lord's work, in your mind.
It's not, in mine.
Wonder how many have taken the time to read the links upstream, especially the one from his current pastor.
He speaks of repentance and forgiveness and obediencew and moving ahead. Y'all know; that Christian stuff.
How quaint.
You're being disingenuous. I have little patience for it. You surely don't think Mr. Terry handled this in the most appropriate manner, but you argue as if his response was completely innocuous. Quit being so partisan yourself and maybe you'll see why he's receiving such criticism.
I gotta admit I've had that same thought many times in the past, myself.
One [hard] look at what passes for "normal" & or "acceptable" or the gutteral dreck people permit to *entertain* them -- both in print & film -- and how the culture's disintergrated & frankly I can't see how a honest question like that couldn't be asked by a honest person.
...it's truly sickening.
Yup, you nail it.
With a 300lbs cellmate named *Dwight* who buys him for a few Marlboros & a partial tube of toothpaste.
As a "prison bitch" he can then learn to look forward to lifes simpler things, like a pair of breasts tatooed on his back.
...& lights out.
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