House of hate to house of love

Ooohh, this is delicious!

The Atlah Church in Harlem has been spewing nasty anti-gay messages for a few years now, messages such as "Jesus would stone homos." The church is nasty enough to be classified as a hate group by the SPLC. But the church hasn't been paying its bills and now owes over $1 million. The church has been ordered into a public auction on February 24th.

Almost immediately, LGBT people began circulating the idea wouldn't it be cool if the Ali Forney Center could buy the place? The AFC of New York serves over 1000 LGBT youth every year. They provides 50,000 meals a year for homeless LGBT youth (dwarfing what the Ruth Ellis Center in Detroit does) and offers interventions for medical and mental health care, case management, and educational and career services. They are delighted with the prospect of taking over the Atlah site, turning a house of hate into one of love. They would use it to house LGBT youth and launch a catering business operated by the youth.

The AFC is asking donors for $200,000. They plan to leverage that money with support from local gov't, major donors, and foundations. In 48 hours they raised $75,000. Even if the AFC doesn't get the Atlah site all this money will go to expand services for LGBT youth. I donated.

Atlah Pastor James David Manning wailed that "sodomites are trying to silence me!" Yup.