Who is Randall Terry? Why did he speak for the Schindler family?
Recently I had the opportunity to chat with Esther Kaplan. She is quite an interesting woman.
photo by Steve Shiotsu
Esther Kaplan
A few lines from her online bio -
Esther Kaplan is a radio and print journalist and a community activist. She is a contributing editor at POZ, the national AIDS magazine; was acting senior editor at The Nation; and writes for The Nation, The Village Voice, and other publications. For ten years, she has been co-host of Beyond the Pale, a weekly radio program covering Jewish culture and politics on WBAI/New York, and she is the producer of The Communique, a public affairs program on WNYE/New York. Her book, With God on Their Side, just came out from The New Press in October 2004. Ms. Magazine calls it "a frightening and necessary read."
On the day that we spoke, the topic of discussion turned to a man who recently spent a great deal of time speaking to the media on behalf of the Schindler family, Terry Schiavo’s family of origin. The person in question is Randall Terry.
During the entire media blitz regarding the Terry Schiavo issues, I had heard his name several times and wondered why it sounded so familiar. I guess it is because Mr. Terry is the founder of the infamous Operation Rescue, the gang of thugs that obstructs entryways to abortion clinics and lists the names of physicians and other clinic workers in hopes that they will be harassed or killed. They harass and beleaguer women seeking services who are in the midst of making difficult decisions and who are terrified by these people and their aggressive tactics.
Kaplan points out that Mr. Terry has also been ordered to pay thousands of dollars in fines for disobeying court orders with regard to the illegal actions he and his band of zealots have taken to intimidate and bully clinic staffs and patients nationwide. He has yet to pay a penny as far as this writer knows.
Terry is fanatical in his goals for the country. He wants a totalitarian Christian theocracy and makes no bones about it.
In an acceptance speech to the U.S. Taxpayers Alliance banquet on August 8, 1995, where Terry received the group's Third Annual Andrew Jackson "Championship of Liberty" Award, he said, “You better believe that I want to build a Christian nation because the only option is a pagan nation. Not that the government can make someone a Christian by decree. A Christian nation would be defined as 'We acknowledge God in our body politic, in our communities, that the God of the Bible is our God, and, we acknowledge that His law is supreme." (The punctuation is his, not mine.)
That’s not the worst of it.
He also said in reference to physicians performing abortion services, “When I, or people like me, are running the country, you'd better flee, because we will find you, we will try you, and we'll execute you. I mean every word of it." He added, "I will make it part of my mission to see to it that they are tried and executed."
I guess they just forgot about having a trial for the previously executed doctors around the country. Too many pressing matters to waste valuable time with silly things like that, I suppose.
The links between Terry, his organization, and previous murders are well documented. He can deny them all day long, and the record will remain.
His use of the Schiavo situation to attempt to rehabilitate his image is shameless.
Speaking of shame, he has publicly denounced his own son for being gay, blaming Jamiel Terry for “bringing great sadness” to the family.
As I read excerpts from an Out magazine interview on the Beliefnet.com Web site, I felt real sorrow for this young man. Not much younger than my own son, his admiration and love for his father come through regardless of the public denunciation and rejection he has endured.
In ending our conversation, Esther Kaplan noted that she grew up in Oregon in a conservative, small town. I had to interrupt her attempts to explain what that was like with a reference to my own upbringing in Jefferson City, Tennessee. When I explained to her that in that town there were no Jewish families and only two or three Catholic families, she became very quiet. I went on to explain that not only is Jeff City the home to Carson-Newman College, that venerable Southern Baptist institution, but that out of 5000 residents, 3000 of them were member of the First Baptist Church. The remainder were mostly members of Immanuel Baptist Church, the working-class counterpart of First Baptist, the Carson-Newman enclave.
We both commiserated on the horrors of our collective childhoods, hoping for better things for the future and the work that lies ahead.
Esther is intelligent, articulate, and well grounded in reality. I will report back to you on her book after I have finished reading it.
