Randall Terry

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Randall Terry
Born	Randall A Terry 1959 (1959)
Residence	Washington, D.C.
Occupation	Pro-life activist, author, musician
Known for	Founding Operation Rescue
Political party	Republican
Religious beliefs	Roman Catholic (since 2005)
Spouse(s)	Cindy Dean (div. 2001) Andrea Sue Kollmorgen
Children	Ebony Whetstone (fostered) Jamiel Terry (adopted) Tila Terry (adopted) Faith Terry (first marriage) and three or more children (second marriage)

Randall A. Terry (born 1959) is an American activist. A political conservative, Terry founded the anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue in 1987 and led the group until 1991.^[1] He has been arrested more than 40 times, most recently for protesting the commencement visit at the University of Notre Dame by President Barack Obama, who is pro-choice, by defying a court order to stay off the school's property.^[2]

In 2003, Randall Terry founded the Society for Truth and Justice and conducted a program called Operation Witness. He was the spokesman for the Schindler family in the Terri Schiavo case. In 2006, he unsuccessfully ran as a Republican for state senator of Florida's eighth district.

Contents 1 Personal life 2 Activism 3 Political involvement 4 Obama at Notre Dame 5 Tiller killing 6 Works 6.1 Bibliography 6.2 Discography 7 References 8 External links

[edit] Personal life

Terry's personal life has frequently come under public scrutiny, some of which he has welcomed, going so far as to put his foster children on his curriculum vitae as part of his "pro-life" bona fides. Terry has had two wives and numerous children. With his first wife Cindy, he had a daughter before fostering two additional daughters and a son. He formally adopted the two youngest foster children. As of 2006, he had three sons with his second wife, Andrea, and was expecting a fourth.^[3] Terry's controversial relationships with three of his adult children and his two wives have frequently made news and raised questions about the sincerity of his commitment to his public causes.

In the early 1980s, Terry married Cindy Dean, a woman he had met in Bible school.^[4][5] In 1985, he met a woman who had borne her second child in prison and was planning an abortion rather than bear a third. Terry persuaded her to continue the pregnancy and a daughter named Tila was born later that year. In 1987, Cindy and Randall Terry had a daughter together whom they named Faith.^[5] In March 1988, they took in Tila, then aged three, and her siblings Jamiel, 8, and Ebony, 12, as foster children. All three are biracial; their mother was white. Terry formally adopted the two younger children in 1994 and began describing his family on his résumé as: "Children: One by birth and three black foster children," although Ebony had left home at the age of 16 in 1991.^[4] Ebony, who was not adopted by Terry, uses the surname Whetstone, but both Jamiel and Tila took and retain the surname Terry.^[4][5]

Though she was only 16 when she left home, Ebony Whetstone soon became pregnant and would eventually have two children outside of marriage.^[4] She converted to Islam, a religion her father has preached is composed of "murderers" and "terrorists."^[4] In 2004, Terry described his relationship with Ebony as "good."^[4] However, Terry banned Tila from his home after she became pregnant outside of marriage twice by age 18; her first pregnancy ended in miscarriage.^[4][6]

He has also banished his adopted son. In 1998, when Terry was running for Congress and accused of racism, his son Jamiel stepped forward to defend him.^[4] In 2000, Jamiel worked with his father on Steven Forbes' campaign for the Republican nomination for U.S. President, and campaigned with his father against gay marriage in Vermont.^[4] In 2004, Jamiel publicly announced that he was gay and wrote an article for Out Magazine for which he was paid $2,500.^[4] Terry contends much of the article was written by other people and most of the statements purported to be facts in the article were untrue. Terry promptly disowned his son and claimed that he had "prostituted" the family name. He attributed Jamiel's sexuality to his biological mother, saying that she was a prostitute.^[4] Jamiel's response was, "My father's first and foremost aim is to protect himself. He talks about how I prostitute the family's name, but he's used the fact that he saved my sister from abortion and rescued me from hardship in his speeches and interviews. What's the difference?"^[4]

When he learned in 2004 that his son was giving an interview about his orientation to the Washington Post, Terry pre-empted Jamiel by writing an essay, My Prodigal Son, the Homosexual,^[7] which was published on Terry's own website and several other websites, rejecting his son and referring to his life as "a shambles."^[4]

In 2000, Terry divorced his wife of 19 years, Cindy,^[4] and married his former church assistant, Andrea Sue Kollmorgen.^[5][6][8] Kollmorgen, born circa 1976, was approximately 25 at the time of their nuptials;^[9] Terry is 17 years older. As a consequence of the divorce, the home on 119 acres where he had lived with Cindy and their four children was to be sold.^[8] His decision to divorce in 2000 to marry the youthful Kollmorgen was unfavorably contrasted in the mainstream press to his own stern judgment expressed in his 1995 book, The Judgment of God: "Families are destroyed as a father vents his mid life crisis by abandoning his wife for a 'younger, prettier model.' "^[4] His sentiments against divorce had been so strong that when his own parents divorced, "Randall refused to let his children speak with their grandfather for three years," according to interviews with the family done by the Washington Post.^[4]

As a result of Terry's divorce from Cindy Dean, the pastor of the Landmark Church of Binghamton, New York, "unceremoniously tossed him out"^[4] although Terry had been a member there for 15 years.^[10] That church had previously censured him for abandoning his wife and the two children still at home in preparation for divorce, and for a "pattern of repeated and sinful relationships and conversations with both single and married women."^[6][10]

After the censure and expulsion, Terry joined the Charismatic Episcopal Church, a denomination established in 1992.^[10] After a period of study commencing in 2005, in 2006, Terry formally converted to Roman Catholicism, taking the confirmation name "David Mark."^[3] After his conversion, he disavowed the first marriage and divorce, saying, "There were tragic problems that were inherent to the marriage. According to Catholic doctrine as it has been taught to me, those problems made it an invalid sacrament."^[3]

In the 2004 essay formally rejecting Jamiel, three years after divorcing Cindy Dean, Terry described his family as "a great wife, a teenage daughter and two small boys." Jamiel was disowned; Ebony and Tila were not mentioned.^[7] The teen daughter was Faith Terry, his child by his original wife, born in 1987. In 2004, the Washington Post reported that Terry and Cindy's daughter was in college.^[4] Five years into his second marriage, a 2006 article in the National Catholic Register described his current family as "his three, soon to be four, rambunctious young boys."^[3]

Terry's second wife, Andrea, is also an anti-abortion activist and was arrested in 2008 for trespass while leafleting a Roman Catholic cathedral parking lot with campaign flyers for a fictitious candidate promoting slavery for African-Americans. Randall Terry stated, "The piece was intended to be incendiary and basically a satire," a protest against vehicles in the church parking lot which, he said, carried bumper stickers supporting pro-choice political candidates, particularly Rudy Giuliani.^[9]

[edit] Activism

In 1986, Randall Terry was arrested for the first time for chaining himself to a sink at an abortion clinic. Operation Rescue grew to become a well-known example of civil disobedience by the American conservative right, and Terry was often in the news because of his activities as the group's leader.

Randall Terry was named as a co-defendant in the 1994 Supreme Court case, NOW v. Scheidler, a class action suit to compel anti-abortion leaders to compensate clinics for loss of business. Terry settled out of court with the National Organization for Women. He promptly filed bankruptcy, prompting Senator Charles Schumer to propose an amendment to a bankruptcy bill in Congress which would "specifically ... prevent abortion opponents from using the bankruptcy code to escape paying court fines." The amendment was not included in the final bill. In 1998, NOW obtained more than 25,000 "frequent flyer miles" held by Terry in order to help satisfy a legal judgment. [[1]]

The long-running case was resolved on February 28, 2006, the Supreme Court voted 8-0 for Scheidler, against NOW.^[11]

In 1990, Terry helped to organize protests outside the hospital where Nancy Cruzan was a patient, around the time that her feeding tube was removed. The group Missouri Citizens for Life also was involved in the protests, along with the Rev. Patrick Mahoney, a former Operation Rescue staffer, and Terry's actual level of involvement is unclear.

In a similar case in 2003, Terry became the spokesman for Terri Schiavo's parents and was in the news as "Terri's Law" was passed in Florida. He continued as the Schindler's spokesman as the struggle rose to the level of national crisis and Schiavo's death in March 2005.^[12]

[edit] Political involvement

In 1998, Randall Terry ran for the United States House of Representatives in Upstate New York. Terry competed with radio station owner William "Bud" Walker for the Republican nomination to face Democratic incumbent Maurice Hinchey. Terry received the endorsement of Focus on the Family head James Dobson; however, national and state Republicans were not supportive of Terry's candidacy.^[13] Terry was defeated by Walker 53% to 35%, but was the Right to Life Party nominee in the general election.^[14] Terry came in third place, winning 7% of the vote, with Hinchey and Walker winning 62% and 31% respectively.^[15]

In 2000, Terry and his son Jamiel promoted the candidacy of Steven Forbes in the Republican presidential primary.^[4]

In June 2005, Terry announced plans to run in the primary against Florida Republican state senator James E. King, citing King's work in attempting to block legislation which would have kept Terri Schiavo alive. In August 2006, in an attempt to undermine King's support in a Republican primary the next month, Terry publicized an endorsement of King by "Bill Clinton" — actually, robo-calls by a professional impersonator of the former President Bill Clinton.^[16] The two "Clinton" scripts each contained a disclaimer. One was, "Hello friend, Bill Clinton here – not really!" The other was "This is a celebrity impersonation."^[16] Terry used the scripts and the impersonator in 43,000 calls. According to a contemporaneous news report from a conservative news service,

The voice sounds – mostly – like the former president, and promises King will give illegal immigrants college tuition, let homosexuals adopt kids and is pro-choice.
"Don't vote for Randall Terry. He's for traditional marriage, right to life, fair tax, wants to protect our borders; and no amnesty for all those potential Democrat voters!" the script continues.^[16]

The "no amnesty" line was a reference to immigration reform proposals which were an issue in many campaigns during 2006. On September 5, 2006, Terry was defeated in the primary, with King receiving over two-thirds of the votes cast.

[edit] Obama at Notre Dame

On March 20, 2009, the White House announced that President Barack Obama was to speak at the May 17 Commencement for the University of Notre Dame. According to Terry, Notre Dame, being one of the foremost Catholic universities in the nation, should not have allowed him to speak. Terry's main objection was that Obama is pro-choice. He was quoted in a very controversial article to the University's newspaper, The Observer, stating that he planned to make the commencement "a circus." Terry was arrested May 1, 2009, on the Notre Dame campus for violating a no-trespass order. He posted a bond of $250 at the St. Joseph County Jail and was released the same day, and assigned a court date later that month.^[2][17]

In a statement given to a Christian news service, Terry compared his brief detention in a campus cell prior to transfer to the jail where he was released to the execution of Jesus Christ:

“

I was taken alone to a cell on campus where I prayed the sorrowful mysteries. With each mystery, my fear for Notre Dame grew; Jesus, betrayed by Judas and abandoned by His friends; 'He came unto His own, and his own did not receive Him;' 'I received these wounds in the House of my friends…' The irony was chilling. The Obama/Notre Dame harlotry is the "consummation" of Catholic America's godless marriage to moral relativism, lukewarmness, and unholy pacifism.[18]

”

[Quotation marks and other punctuation in original; starred ellipsis added to indicate abridgment.]

[edit] Tiller killing

When Kansas obstetrician George Tiller was killed while serving as an usher in his Wichita church on the morning of May 31, 2009, Terry immediately issued the following statement:

“

George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. Unless some miracle happened, he left this life with his hands drenched with the innocent blood of tens of thousands of babies that he murdered. Surely there will be a dreadful accounting for what he has done. I believe George Tiller was one of the most evil men on the planet; every bit as vile as the Nazi war criminals who were hunted down, tried, and sentenced after they participated in the 'legal' murder of the Jews that fell into their hands. But even Mr. Tiller - like other murderers - deserved a trial of his peers, and a legal execution, not vigilante justice.... Our actions must be equal to this crime: we must continue with vigorous (yet peaceful) actions such as have been used by every social revolution since America's birth....[19][20]

”

On the same day, June 1, Terry released a video in which he called President Barack Obama and pro-choice politicians child killers, and described Tiller as a "mass murderer" who "reaped what he sowed." He voiced regret that Tiller wasn't able to "get things right with his maker" and that it was unfortunate that he didn't get a "trial of a jury of his peers and to have a proper execution."^[21]

Terry's comments provoked a backlash. The Albany Times-Union, in an editorial, accused Terry of undermining the credibility of the "generally peaceful" anti-abortion movement, and Jacob Appel described Terry as "a George Lincoln Rockwell for the 21st century".^[22]

[edit] Works

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Randall Terry

[edit] Bibliography

• Accessory To Murder: The Enemies, Allies, And Accomplices To The Death of Our Culture (1990) ISBN 0-943497-78-7
• Why Does A Nice Guy Like Me... Keep Getting Thrown In Jail?: How theological escapism and cultural retreatism in the Church have led to America's demise. (1993) ISBN 1-56384-052-9
• The Sword: The Blessing Of Righteous Government And The Overthrow Of Tyrants (1995) ISBN 1-887690-00-X

[edit] Discography

• I Believe in You
• Dark Sunglasses Day

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Randall Terry

• Terry's official site
• Radio show
• Randall Terry, Says He's More Concerned About Obama's Reaction Than Tiller's Murder by The Huffington Post, May 31 2009