Witchcraft! Homosexuality! Abortion! EVERYBODY PANIC!

Oh yes, Australia can do insane nutjobs with the best of them – and I have the dubious honour of being in the same city as this one tomorrow. Pastor Danny Nalliah will be in Canberra, the nation’s capital, to conduct a ‘prayer offensive’ atop Mt. Ainslie. Why? To combat such horrifically evil forces as witchcraft, homosexuality and abortion.
He picked Mt. Ainslie (a mountain overlooking the city, from whence one can see straight down Anzac Parade to Parliament House) because a group of schoolchildren allegedly found a black mass altar there. ‘The type of altar discovered on Mount Ainslie pointed to a black mass and the work of dark forces wanting to cast spells on Australia and federal Parliament,’ Pastor Danny said. And then – and this is my favourite, FAVOURITE bit – someone asked him why he thought that Satan had managed to invade the houses of Parliament, and he replied: ‘The number of politicians who have serious marriage problems.’
I feel kind of bad taking potshots at him, actually. It’s just too easy.

But wait! There’s more! The free set of steak knives to this already wonderfully batshit deal is when he expounded more on the influence of Satan, citing homosexuality, abortion and the push for a Bill of Rights as Work Of The Devil™, and then blustered: ‘Me trying to explain it to you is like trying to teach a cricketer how to play soccer.’
Oh Pastor Danny, how I wish my tiny feeble brain was great enough to learn your particular brand of soccer! I am clearly just not enlightened enough to understand your argument. It cannot be as it seems, surely – that you are totally insane.
This isn’t the first wonderfully crazy stuff Pastor Danny has come out with. He ran for a seat in the Senate about five years back, but ended up getting kicked out of the scary right wing Family First party for one of his brochures, which urged his followers to pray that God would destroy Satan’s strongholds, which included brothels, gambling outlets, mosques, temples (of several religions) and bottle shops. Family First have since totally renounced any connection with Pastor Danny. Pastor Danny retaliated by claiming that Family First have lost the Christian vote. Because of how, you know, he speaks for every single Christian in Australia and all.
But possibly the most egregiously horrendous thing he’s ever come out with was in the wake of the Black Saturday fires in Victoria this year, in which about two hundred people died. Shortly after the fires, Pastor Danny came out with this gem:
‘God’s conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb.’
Oh yes. Deadly bushfires = God smiting the state of Victoria for the decriminalisation of abortion in 2008.
I don’t know if I have ever been so proud of my country as when Pastor Danny was awarded the Golden Ernie for making the most sexist statement of the year. Ernie Awards are given to those whose public statements are deemed to be the most sexist (judged by the volume of boos and hisses), and Pastor Danny took top honours this year. And that’s saying something, considering he faced stiff competition from radio shock jock Kyle Sandilands, for his stunningly insensitive responses during a radio stunt in which a fourteen year old girl admitted she had been raped; and from the NSW police force, who forced a woman to work overtime for every minute she spent expressing breast milk.
So yes, I am definitely looking forward to having Pastor Danny in my city, praying atop Mt. Ainslie ‘to repent and pray against any evil done in our land including the adverse effects of witchcraft, homosexuality and, of course, the devastation of abortion, so that God will save our land.’ (Amusingly, he’ll have to pray over the voices of the Australian Sex Party, who are planning to hold a peaceful demonstration on the mountain to protest the influence of radical religious agendas on federal politics). Given my sympathetic attitude towards homosexuality and the freedom of religions and my stance on reproductive rights, I’ll be waiting for that thunderbolt to smite me down.