ReCall: Randall Terry Call Gays Bad Names

We may have just done a post about Randall Terry in the Ring-A-Ding but while researching that little tidbit, The Operator stumbled across an interview that Terry gave to Paul O'Donnell on Beliefnet.com. This interview, which was in response to a piece Terry's son, Jamiel, wrote in OUT magazine about his homosexuality, not only refutes most of Jamiel's media claims but goes on to compare homosexuals with car thieves, alcoholics and drug addicts.

While it is no surprise that Terry would say of Jamiel, "I cannot have him in my home," what is more surprising is that Randall Terry, who espouses family values, has been divorced once and has an estranged relationship with two of his adopted children.

In the interview on Beliefnet, Terry fully admits that he thinks homosexuality is a result of some traumatic childhood event:

"I think most of it is behavioral. A crisis occurred in their youth. I've heard that 90 percent of lesbians were assaulted in their youth. It's not quite as high for males. But I believe that a traumatic event happened for most of them in their youth, whether it involved sexual molestation or abuse or viewing pornography, an absent father, or a sexual contact in the pubescent years. God did not design the human being to have these things happen and then to function as if everything was fine."

Furthermore, he believes that homosexuality can be cured but doesn't work in most cases because the homosexuals don't put in the effort:

"At this point in human history, we've got an awful lot of data about breaking addictions, and we have a lot of experienced people out there to aid in the process. So what I have found in my conversations with homosexuals over the years is that they reject the process of healing, because it's too painful and it's too time-consuming. People would rather go to an altar and pray and have all the feelings taken away for good than to spend three months in an in-patient program or in intensive therapy and have the pain of a long healing process. It's too easy to surrender."

What is most disturbing is Terry's view about homosexuals. More than once in the interview he compares the gay "lifestyle" to addiction and crime and even calls it "a self-abusive, self-destructive sexual addiction:

"If I love my son, I can't say to him, "Hey, you're committing suicide on the installment plan. This is a great lifestyle." I have to be honest with him. Take out the word homosexuality and put in alcoholism or put in drug addiction. Would you tell a drug addict, "I accept you?"

"but what I would say to him or to anyone is that you might feel like stealing a Porsche, but as long as you don't act out on it, you're not going to get in trouble. I think a lot of us have feelings from time to time that are rather dark. But it's our behavior that we can modify"

"They're in despair because they know in their heart of hearts that this sexual addiction is self-abusive and a horrifying, degrading lifestyle"

And if homosexuality stems from events in childhood, how does Terry explain his son's childhood and his eventual coming out as gay:

"Any school of psychology will tell you that by the time a child is 6 or 7 years old, so much of their personality is formed, and any traumas that happened to them will be with them for the rest of their life. That's Psychology 101. We didn't get Jamiel till he was 8, as a foster child, and didn't adopt him till he was 14. He'd been subjected to things and had seen things by the time he was 8 that would mar anybody for life"

What is interesting to note is that in an interview given to Beliefnet at the same time, Jamiel Terry clarifies this timeline:

" He stresses so much that this is an adopted child. But we did not feel like adopted children. We felt like we were 100 percent a part of that family. We officially moved into their house when I was eight, with no interruptions. We were living with them on and off from the age of 4. I was calling them Mom and Dad at the age of 4 and 5"

And now, Randall Terry is running for Senate in the 8th District of Florida, where if he is elected he could help shape legislation on gay rights, gay marriage and adoption and family values.

Read Randall Terry's interview on Beliefnet here.

Read Jamiel Terry's interview on Beliefnet here.

Read Jamiel Terry's piece from OUT magazine here.

Randall Terry [campaign site]

Randall Terry ; Jamiel Terry ;Politics