If you’re a coffee snob, you might not think that, say, the skim latte at Starbucks tastes very good. But you probably don’t think it’s flavored with the semen of men who have sex with other men, as this New York City pastor surmised in a bizarre YouTube rant about the coffee chain.
The video was produced by Pastor James David Manning, the head pastor at the ATLAH (All the Land Anointed Holy) Worldwide Missionary Church in Harlem, New York. Last week, Pastor Manning made headlines when he claimed that Starbucks was “ground zero” for the Ebola virus, as Ebola patient Dr. Craig Spencer, a “sodomite” and fellow Harlem resident, allegedly frequented the coffee shop.
Manning’s remarks sparked protests from gay-rights activists, who stood outside the ATLAH church handing out free coffee and chanting “Stop the hate.” This week on his YouTube channel, the Manning Network, Manning fired back, accusing the “sodomite” activists of doling out semen-spiked Starbucks coffee to innocent passersby:
“They had a big bucket of Starbucks coffee. They said that this church is a hate church, and that I’m a hate preacher…Starbucks is a place where these types frequent and a lot of body fluids are exchanged there. But the thing that I was not aware of is that there has been information that has been released… what Starbucks was doing, is they were taking specimens of male semen, and they were putting it in the blends of their lattes. Now, this is the absolute truth.”
Manning added that Starbucks was discriminating in the male “specimens” it adds to its blends. He speculated that they likely didn’t use garden-variety semen to spice up their blends, but rather, the semen of “sodomites.” Said Manning, “Semen flavours up the coffee, and makes you thinks you’re having a good time.”
Of course, the “information” Manning was citing wasn’t actually from a news story, but rather a satirical article from a website called the Inquisitr, which “reported’ on an FDA investigation into Starbucks spiking its coffee with semen. Apparently lacking the critical faculties necessary to distinguish fact from parody, Manning ran with the article—and he ran fast.
This isn’t the first time that Manning has spouted bigoted nonsense on his YouTube channel. In the past, he’s claimed that Vladimir Putin will out Obama as a “homo” in the next 90 days (his deadline is next Thursday), that Obama is a Muslim, and that Americans are addicted to “homo heroin.”
There is little chance that Manning is onto something here, but just in case, don’t order your next latte with extra froth.
HT Pink News UK | Screengrab via ATLAH Worldwide/YouTube