Gay-help groups bid to buy foes’ church

NEW YORK — Two groups that serve gay New Yorkers want to buy the Atlah World Missionary Church at a foreclosure auction, hoping to get an ironic last word on a Harlem church known for hateful public messages condemning gays and President Barack Obama to eternal damnation

The congregation’s pastor has vowed not to let that happen. “We’re not going to be pushed like this,” said Dr. James David Manning, who literally thumped a leather-bound Bible during an interview at his church this week. “I’m tired of people ramming their ideas down one’s throat.”

A fixture in Harlem for more than 30 years, the Atlah World Missionary Church has never been shy about expressing its own ideas. The large red billboard in front of the church is emblazoned with rotating messages like one that said to gays “cursed be thou with cancer, HIV, syphilis, stroke, madness, the itch, then Hell.” Others have gone after Obama.

So, when the news broke that the church owed $1 million to creditors and was facing a foreclosure auction Feb. 24, some quarters received it with glee.

One nonprofit group, the Ali Forney Center, has raised $175,000 on its website as part of an effort to buy the church and convert the building into transitional housing for homeless gay youths — the very population, its leaders say, that is most harmed by the Atlah church’s message.