Don Lemon, in a guest host role on the
Joy Behar Show, on Tuesday spoke with family members of
televangelists Jim Bakker, Tammy Faye Bakker Messner and Oral
Roberts.
Randy Roberts Potts, the grandson of
Oral Roberts, told Lemon that he believed his grandfather accepted
him.
“Well, he apparently knew I was gay.
And about six months before he passed I went to visit him and we
didn't talk about it, but he was wonderful to me. More gracious than
he had been in my life. So, I feel strongly, you know, it was his
way of kind of saying he still loved me no matter what.”
Potts knew at an early age that he was
attracted to men – he announced at 18 that he was bisexual – but
it wasn't until he was married to a college girlfriend that he
announced he's gay.
He was ostracized for divorcing his
wife in 2006. And was denied a seat in the family's seating section
at his grandparents' funerals.
Lemon also spoke with Jay Bakker, the
son of televangelists Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner.
Bakker, who heads the gay-inclusive
Revolution
Church, said he does not believe being gay is a sin.
“I thought God hated me, until I was
about 19-20 years old and started reading the Bible for myself and
realizing that, 'Wow, the Bible really does have a lot of good news.'
There's a lot of grace there, and a lot of the stuff I had seen
before … didn't mesh. And so, I was really shocked that I was
loved and accepted. And I wanted other people to experience that,”
Bakker said. (The video is embedded in the right panel of this
page.)