ELMER GANTRY RIDES TO THE RESCUE

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

I was momentarily surprised last weekend to discover what had crawled out from under its rock down in Florida, but after a New York minute's worth of thought it made perfect sense. The Schiavo case had become a sad sick circus, so why shouldn't Randall Terry be the ringmaster? As the biggest camera whore in the Troglodyte Right, it was almost predestined that he would show up.

Listening to National Public Radio "get it wrong" last Saturday on "Weekend Edition" when they identified him merely as the "family spokesman" reminded me that it really is true - those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

I first saw Randall Terry during the "Holy Week of Rescue" back in 1989 when he and the morons of his "Operation Rescue" blockaded the Feminist Women’s Health Center here in Los Angeles, forcing it to close operations despite the efforts of a lot of good people - myself and SWMBO (though we hadn’t met yet then) included - who put their bodies between the clinic’s patients and the deluded fools of what I have since come to see as The American Taliban, aka The Christian Right.

If there is a "leader" of that movement worthy of the mantle of being the new Elmer Gantry, Randall Terry is the guy. Over the four years his Operation Rescue terrorized women across America, over 40,000 people were arrested in his demonstrations outside abortion clinics, most notably in Wichita Kansas over a long summer later in 1989.

As a writer of fiction, I wouldn't dare make up a biography like Randall Terry's. His grandmother was a civil rights activist and his aunts were strong feminists, one of whom would later serve as spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Rochester, N.Y. She would later note with intentional irony that he was raised at the knees of feminists.

As a teenager Terry played a mean guitar and piano, and was a major local consumer of marijuana. Planning to become a rock star, he dropped out of high school and headed west. Several months later, he had his religious epiphany in a diner outside Galveston, Texas. Returning to Rochester, he began talking of God and hellfire, and selling used cars. Enrolling in a Bible school in the early 1980s, he met his wife, Cindy. They talked of serving as missionaries in Central America.

After a vision of using civil rights tactics to save the unborn, Terry began his operation in Binghamton, New York, in 1986. Among his most avid followers there was James Kopp, who would be a trusted lieutenant in the movement when they landed on the American political map with a series of demonstrations in Atlanta in the summer of 1988 where both were imprisoned for 40 days. Ten years later, Kopp was charged in the murder of a doctor who performed abortions in Buffalo, N.Y., who he killed from ambush, shooting the doctor in his home. When he was finally caught several years later after being hidden in the United States, Canada and France by movement supporters, Kopp pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

There is additional evidence suggesting that Randall Terry and Operation Rescue may have provoked violence at abortion clinics, including the murder of an doctor and an assistant at a clinic in Pensacola, Florida in 1990.

At an anti-abortion rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on August 16, 1993, Terry declared that, "Our goal is a Christian nation... We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.... Theocracy means God rules. I've got a hot flash. God rules." Two years later he declared, speaking of doctors who perform abortions, "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 will execute you."

Not only was Terry opposed to abortion, but to family planning in general. He once described Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a "whore" and an "adulteress." He also opposed and divorce, writing in his 1995 book The Judgment of God, that "Families are destroyed as a father vents his mid life crisis by abandoning his wife for a 'younger, prettier model.'" Seemingly unaware of the irony, Terry's fall from grace began later in 1995, when he divorced his wife of 20 years, Cindy, and married a much younger woman who had been his housekeeper. The pastor of his church - the Landmark Church of Binghamton, N.Y. - unceremoniously tossed him out when he divorced his wife.

On March 4, 1998, Terry was named in a lawsuit that sought to force anti-abortion leaders to pay for damages caused in clinic attacks, filed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Terry settled with NOW out of court, agreeing to a permanent injunction against any future actions against clinics, which many took as the end of Randall Terry.

On November 8, 1998, Terry filed for bankruptcy in an effort to avoid paying massive debts owed to women's groups and abortion clinics that had sued him. Terry's use of the bankruptcy laws to avoid paying the judgments against him was what prompted Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) to propose amendments to each of the bankruptcy "reform" bills to specifically prevent abortion opponents from using the bankruptcy code to escape paying court fines. This year, with a 55-45 majority in the Senate, the Republicans defeated the Schumer Amendment that had stalled action on bankruptcy "reform" in 2002 and 2003 when anti-choice House Republicans refused to vote for a bill containing this provision.

Following his bankruptcy, Terry solicited donations from the True Believers, declaring on his website that "The purveyors of abortion on demand have stripped Randall Terry of everything he owned." Unsurprisingly, he failed to mention that the donations would be used to pay for his new $432,000 house in Florida - where he had moved to take advantage of the same "homestead protection law" O.J. Simpson has used to avoid paying civil judgement against him. Terry's explanation was that he wanted a home where his family would be safe and where "we could entertain people of stature, people of importance. I have a lot of important people that come through my home. And I will have more important people come through my home." The same month he paid the deposit on his new home, a court ruled that Mr. Family Values "was not paying a fair share of child support" to his ex-wife for their four children.

Like the proverbial bad penny, Randall Terry resurfaced last summer in Ponte Vedra Beach in northern Florida, where he had formed a new organization, The Society for Truth and Justice, to campaign against homosexuality after his adopted son had outed himself that Spring as being gay. His first campaign was against the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 decision striking down anti-sodomy laws, launching an "Impeach the Twisted Six" campaign with a rally in Jacksonville on August 9, 2004.

Thus, it really isn’t a surprise that this camera and microphone hound is where he is. Terri Schiavo's father Bob Schindler, announced in February that "Our family asked Randall Terry to come, and we gave him carte blanche to put Terri's fight in front of the American people. He did exactly what we asked, and more. Randall organized vigils and protests, he coordinated the media, he helped us meet with Governor Bush." In fact, "Terri's Law" signed by Gov. Jeb Bush last October 21 might better be known as "Terry’s Law", memorializing Randall Terry's key role in mobilizing fundamentalists to pressure the Governor and the legislature to intervene in the Schiavo case.

Over this past week, many commentators have said that the lesson of the Schiavo case is that one should be certain to have a living will on file. If Randall Terry and his like-minded troglodytes of the Christian Right have their way, even this won't be any good.

In the 1970s, when living will legislation first gained support, the anti-abortion movement was adamantly opposed to these demands for "death with dignity." The National Right to Life Coalition states on its website that "living wills are used to condition public acceptance of assisted suicide, mercy killing, and euthanasia." Though the religious extremists lost this fight in the 1980s, Schiavo's case has re-energized the movement's opposition to living wills, in the guise of opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Fr. Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, which is an extremist anti-abortion group involved in the Schiavo case, has called living wills "unnecessary and dangerous for patients, doctors and society." In an article in the Baptist Press News on October 20, R. Albert Mohler, Jr. declared that the Schiavo case is proof "that the culture of death is gaining new ground and that what has been styled as 'voluntary' euthanasia is now turning into involuntary euthanasia."

Republicans in state legislatures have been working hard to overturn the authority for living wills. Legislation currently before the Wisconsin Senate allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical personnel who morally disagree with the guidelines regarding feeding and hydration tubes to ignore living wills and advance directives. This legislation has already passed the Republican-controlled Assembly and is likely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate. Of course, in Republican fundamentalist cloud-cuckoo land, it will then be perfectly all right for them to pass versions of the Texas legislation Governor George W. Bush signed, allowing hospitals to pull the plug when your bank account and insurance are exhausted.

In Elmer Gantry's America, you only ever get the salvation you pay for.