Chicken-Fried News: The confession

Chicken-Fried News: Green gobblin
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The rejected gay grandson of powerful and controversial Pentecostal televangelist Oral Roberts is telling all in a new memoir, The Bible Went Down with the Birdie Jean.

Randy Roberts Potts’ account will not be in traditional book form, but will be revealed steadily, one post at a time, through the rest of 2016 on the Instagram photo-sharing social media app.

The idea of putting a memoir on Instagram might sound silly at first, but what other means of self-publishing could make the work more widely available to the public?

A story by The Gayly says Potts’ series will be around 65,000 words in 300 separate posts.

He published the first post in his series on Sept. 6.

The book will not only detail Potts’ biographical experiences with his family in the Roberts compound, but also tell the stories of other gay Oklahomans and former students at Tulsa’s Oral Roberts University, known for a strict honor code that prohibits homosexuality.

In a recent essay published by The Guardian, Potts described the experience unique to many LGBTQ youth in the state.

“We Oklahoma queers can’t speak English without the influence of the King James Version; we can’t talk about sex or coming out without using the words we heard in church,” he wrote.

Read the memoir as it’s released by following @thebirdiejean on Instagram.

Print headline: The confession

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