Meeting Randy Roberts Potts...New Friends And Old Scars

We at gay family values have been fortunate enough to meet lots of other fantastic YouTubers. The great thing about meeting these people in person is that we really get to know them as the regular people. Sean Chapin was the first YouTuber we had ever met and we had so many stars in our eyes. Also, this summer we got to meet the infamous Jim Stone and his husband and had a wonderful time hanging out together as well as eating his husbands fantastic cooking. And each "Big Gay Vacation" has brought us to YouTubers that I now count as good friends. As people often tell us that we have impacted their lives in positive ways...I don't know if you all know how much richness all of you add to ours. It's one of the big pluses of being a part of the YouTube community.

Therefor, it was with great excitement that we looked forward to meeting Randy Roberts Potts. Randy is the grandson of the legendary Evangelist Oral Roberts...a father to three awesome children...and a gay man facing his past with courage and using it to make positive change in the world. I, in particular, had a strong desire to meet Randy because of his grandfather's ministry and its ubiquitous place in my own past. I admit that I was not sure what I was hoping to find in talking to him....healing...revelation...both of those being very religiously loaded terms. But what I did find was worth so much more.

Fundamentalists and the Human Disconnect

There is a certain segment of the "pro-family" fundamentalist camp that you simply ignore because its rantings are so extreme they simply marginalize themselves. Even groups like NOM go far out of their way to publicly distance themselves from these people....even though they secretly agree with one another. Bryan Fischer of the America Family Association is one such individual and his messages are usually over the top. His last forey into the news cycle was to claim that homosexuality was akin to heroin abuse and should be treated as such...yes that meant illegality and some kind of treatment program for being gay. This time around...via Good As you...Mr. Fischer wants all Fundamentalist families to start having children so they can outbreed the gays/liberals....wow...just wow....thats one extra crispy bucket o' crazy.

Last time around I ignored Mr. Fischer largely because it was universaly acknowleged that he was uber-rightwing fringe and giving him any attention at all was giving his perspective more weight than it deserved. So why give him blog space now? Well as I read his words...as crazy as they are...they betray a viewpoint held by a  large swath of Americans...specifically the disconnection of gays and lesbians from their basic humanity.