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WATCH: Lesbian Couple Confronts 'Sodomite Semen' Pastor

WATCH: Lesbian Couple Confronts 'Sodomite Semen' Pastor

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Pastor James David Manning of ATLAH World Missionary Church in Harlem told the two married women they were possessed by demons.

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The notoriously homophobic Harlem pastor who infamously claimed that Starbucks spiked its lattes with "sodomite semen," stayed on message when confronted by a lesbian couple and LGBT allies outside his church earlier this month, reports Raw Story.

Pastor James David Manning also revealed in the confrontation, caught on video by New York City's WPIX TV, that he has previously suppressed his own "homosexual urgings."

Nevertheless, "I believe that sodomites are sexually diseased people," Manning told WPIX.

The TV station staked out a spot outside ATLAH World Missionary Church in New York City's Harlem neighborhood June 9, when the church's marquee bore a sign reading "Many of these homos moving into Harlem looking for some black meat."

One resident called the sign "disgusting," while another lamented that he has to explain the hateful messages to his small children when his family passes the church.

While Manning defended his views as constitutionally protected free speech, he saved his most fervent vitriol for LGBT residents.

"You are going to hell for your wicked, insidious lifestyles," Manning told Sharifa Ferryman, a lesbian who lives in the neighborhood and said she often passes the church's hateful signs while strolling hand in hand with her wife. "It's a disgrace that you would stand here and confess that you have a relationship with another woman. It's a disgrace before God."

This isn't the first time pastor Manning has been called on the carpet for his vehemently anti-LGBT messages. In March 2014 a group of LGBT activists, led by trans and lesbian activist Jennifer Louise Lopez, picketed ATLAH Missionary Church, demanding that the congregation make good on the church's signage that called for gay people to be stoned to death. The exact language of the sign claimed that "Jesus would stone homos."

Manning's pastoral messages have been so consistently hateful that ATLAH World Missionary Church was one of just four new organizations added to the progressive Southern Poverty Law Center's list of active anti-LGBT hate groups last month. After claiming that Jesus would stone gay people, the church's marquee later warned that any church or congregant showing support for "homes" should be cursed with "cancer, HIV, syphilis, stroke, madness, itch, then hell."

Most infamous, however, have been pastor Manning's video sermons on Starbucks. First he claimed that Starbucks coffee shops are "ground zero for spreading Ebola and other diseases" because of the "upscale sodomites" who "exchange a lot of body fluids" there. Then, taking a satirical story seriously, he reported that Starbucks lattes are flavored with semen, and he suspected that "they're getting their semen from sodomites."

Watch WPIX's report below, followed by raw video of the confrontation, also captured by the station's cameras.

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Sunnivie Brydum

Sunnivie is the managing editor of The Advocate, and an award-winning journalist whose passion is covering the politics of equality and elevating the unheard stories of our community. Originally from Colorado, she and her spouse now live in Los Angeles, along with their three fur-children: dogs Luna and Cassie Doodle, and "Meow Button" Tilly.
Sunnivie is the managing editor of The Advocate, and an award-winning journalist whose passion is covering the politics of equality and elevating the unheard stories of our community. Originally from Colorado, she and her spouse now live in Los Angeles, along with their three fur-children: dogs Luna and Cassie Doodle, and "Meow Button" Tilly.