Family Breaks With Klan, Now Preaches Danger of Hate Groups : Racism: Despite threats, parents try to steer others away from the organization. They warn of dangers of white supremacy.

Hard times and bitterness made the Ku Klux Klan an appealing choice for Gary and Jan Ralston.

They gave their children no choice at all.

In 1988, the life the couple had begun two decades earlier as 16-year-old high school dropouts was crumbling. Gary lost his job at a radiator shop. Their church rejected them as youth ministers because of their appearance. They had pulled their only daughter out of school at 14 because she said she was hassled by black students for refusing a date with a black youth.

“I had a lot of anger in my heart at that time,” Gary said. “The klan seemed to listen and they seemed to care.”

For the next 3 1/2 years, Gary and Jan’s fierce loyalty to the klan drove them to abandon friends and turn on their children. They forced their daughter and a 13-year-old son to join the white supremacist group. An older son who balked was beaten.

Their eldest son, Allan, was thrown out of the house after he refused to join and the family learned he was gay. Gary Ralston now acknowledges brooding with klan buddies about killing him.

“I just couldn’t believe they got into an organization that would make anyone want to kill their own flesh and blood,” said Allan, now 22.

Ultimately, his parents could not believe it, either. Despite a campaign of anonymous vandalism and threats, the Ralstons now are rebuilding their lives and aggressively trying to steer others from the path they chose.

They take their klan scrapbook and memorabilia to schools to tell students of the dangers of hate groups. They have appeared on television talk shows and say they are negotiating deals for a book and a movie, although they will not discuss details.

“I’m sorry for what I’ve done and what I’ve put people through while I was klan,” said Gary, who bears a “White Power” klansman tattoo on his shoulder. He said he will have it removed eventually.

The Ralstons signed up for the klan during a 1988 membership rally. They chose the militant Southern White Knights chapter and dragged their youngest two children to a nighttime initiation ceremony several weeks later in the north Georgia woods.

Shannon, now 19, and her younger brother, Steve, now 17, were ordered to reject their nonwhite friends and participate in klan activities.

Steve took down his posters of Michael Jordan and hid his rap music tapes. But he refused to abandon his black friends and invited them over to play basketball when his parents were not home.

“I was always afraid the klan would see it,” he said. “But I just couldn’t turn my back to all my friends because my parents went to join the klan.”

Meanwhile, Gary and Jan were appointed officers of their 200-member chapter. They shouted fiery, racist speeches during rallies and spent all holidays with fellow klansmen.

Gary often received phone calls in the middle of the night, after which he would leave for several hours. He declined to be specific about the outings but said the mission was to terrorize blacks and other klan targets.

“I never killed no one, I’ll put it that way,” he said.

When sons Allan and Bill, now 21, returned home from military duty in 1989, neither wanted to join the klan. Both also brought home explosive news: Bill was engaged to a Latina, and Allan was gay.

The family says Gary beat Bill several times until he agreed to call off the engagement and joined the klan.

The revelation of Allan’s homosexuality prompted Gary to spend a night by the pool, drinking Jack Daniel’s and telling fellow klansmen he planned to kill his son. Instead, he and Jan disowned Allan and kicked him out of the house.

The Ralstons’ loyalty to the KKK began to wane after Jan and Shannon appeared on a “Sally Jessy Raphael” show about mothers and daughters in the klan. Producers also invited Allan to appear. The audience cheered him for rejecting the klan and jeered Jan for embracing it.

When Allan told Jan after the show that he was not returning to Georgia, she feared that she would never see her son again. Jan also was struck by an article she read on the flight home about Paul Michael Glaser, the TV actor whose wife has AIDS and whose child died from it.

“I was reading this and thinking, ‘How do I have the audacity to praise God for AIDS?’ ” she said. “I talked to my husband and said, ‘I’m going to come out of the klan. It’s destroying us and it’s destroying me to hate.’ ”

Gary also was having doubts. He said he cringed watching Bill deliver a speech at a klan rally and seeing the “hateful monster” his son had become.

Jan agreed to do another “Sally Jessy Raphael” show about leaving the KKK, despite Gary’s threats of divorce. But Gary stopped balking when fellow klansmen began calling the house.

“They were threatening my wife while I was still a member,” he said. “This was my so-called brotherhood that I would have died for, conspiring against my wife and kids.”

Gary never attended another klan function and denounced the group a few months later in January on “Oprah Winfrey.”

Today at the Ralston home, Allan is welcome. Steve has his Michael Jordan posters back on the wall. Jan and Shannon plan to take an exam this fall to obtain high school diplomas.

But life is far from normal. Since they broke with the klan, the family dog has been fatally poisoned, the windows at Gary’s new radiator shop have been shot out twice in one week, and the lining of the back yard pool has been slashed.

Police have not caught the vandals.

“We always get a call a couple of days later and that’s how we know it’s the klan,” Jan said. “They say stuff like, ‘Your dog is dead and y’all are next.’ ‘

The hate mail and threatening phone calls become more frequent after the Ralstons appear on a talk show or grant another interview. Gary has spent nights crouched in his bushes cradling a shotgun.