Fear-Mongering Presents: The Fun, Wealthy Gay Gentleman

James David Manning is the pastor of the ATLAH World Church in Harlem, New York. Last week, his website posted a video through which the pastor educated his community about the dangers of the “white homo,” which according to Manning is to blame for the lack of “males in the home.”

In 2011, the media started churning out stories about a “black marriage crisis,” citing a Yale study showing that only 42 percent of black women are married. But Ivory A. Toldson, a Howard University professor and research analyst for the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, and Bryant Marks, a psychology professor at Morehouse College and faculty associate at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research, looked at data between 2000 and 2009 and found that only 25 percent of black women stay unmarried after 35.

The “black marriage crisis” has received its fair share of myth-busting, but fear-mongering continues and the new enemy is the “white homo,” a “demon” unleashed by Barack Obama.

“Black woman, let me say something to you. You have a very hard time competing against a white homosexual male,” Manning says during the four-minute YouTube rant. “He’s usually got money — a white homo usually has an American Express card, he usually has an opportunity at the theater. Homos love the theater! They love to go out to dinner parties, they love that kind of a thing — and as a black woman, you can’t compete, not only with the financial strength of a white homo, black sister!”

Not only is the “white homo” coming for black men, but the President of the United States is effectively fostering a culture where there is no penalty for being gay! What’s worse, now he and other black leaders are cheering on black men who come out of the closet! Oh noes!

“So we have the outing of people like Jason Collins, who is an alleged basketball player, and Michael Sam, a football player — two blacks that have come out of the closet and have received national acclaim from Obama, from Michelle ‘the fist-bumper’ Obama, from Oprah Winfrey, from all black people encouraging more black men to come out of the closet,” says the pastor. (Not sure what’s alleged about Jason Collins being a basketball player. Collins had taken the court as an openly gay NBA player the day before Manning posted his video.)

And just in case it’s unclear to anyone where exactly the good pastor stands on the issue, Manning makes sure to give a nod to the Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, the president of Uganda who signed the “Kill the Gays” bill into law last week. Due to international pressure, the final version of the bill made punishment stop at life imprisonment, instead of a death sentence. Failure to report gay people is also punishable with imprisonment under the new law.

Museveni, like Manning, believes that people are not born gay, they choose it. As a result, oppression and fighting a “permissive culture” is the optimal solution to the gay “problem.”

I don’t even.

Header image via Village Voice.