Did you hear the one about the fire alarm salesperson who became an enemy of the South African state? I’m referring to the decision of home affairs to bar entry to anti-gay American pastor Steven Anderson.
Having spent quite a bit of time immersing myself in Anderson’s tragicomic world this week, I can inform you that Anderson’s “church”, located in a strip mall, is also the premises for his fire alarm installation business.
It’s little wonder that Anderson has to mix business with pleasure, given that he has nine children and counting. For Anderson, continuing to procreate like a New York rat is probably less a divine mandate than a desperate attempt to swell his congregation numbers. Attendance at his Faithful Word Baptist Church averages 150, of which about 30 are children.
On Yelp, the user-generated guide to local businesses, the Faithful Word Baptist Church has attracted an average one-star rating. Sample comment: “The state should shut this shit-hole down.”
Anderson specialises in the kind of insults that are normally hurled at adults by angry teenagers. “If you’re a homosexual, I hope you get brain cancer,” he told a gay radio host a few years ago. He thinks women should keep completely quiet in church. “Even if [women] were to have a question, they’re not to ask that question in the church,” he informed his congregation in 2014. This is presumably because he fears the questions that any woman would ask, like: “Why are you such a creep?”
The pastor recently celebrated his 35th birthday. My online research reveals that they roasted three pigs and someone gave him a framed certificate to mark the fact that his church has been classified as an anti-gay hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Centre. I felt a bit sorry for him, getting such a shit present.
Anderson’s wife, who home-schools all her children, is a downright hilarious character. She makes and sells her own line of “modest swimwear” that makes burkinis look positively provocative.
Mrs Anderson maintains a public blog titled Are They All Yours?!??, in reference to her alarming fertility. She believes birth control is the enemy of a happy marriage. “The best way to show your wife you love her and affirm her as a competent wife and mother is to make her a mother again and again,” she writes. That logic seems a bit circular to me, but what do I know?
I’m delighted that home affairs decided to keep the Andersons away, though I may not be in the majority. When News24 ran an online poll asking readers whether Anderson should be allowed into the country, 51% said yes, 32% said no and 17% said: “As long as he behaves.” It should be noted that in a poll on the same platform a few days previously, 83% of readers indicated that they believed their dog understands the words they say.
There’s one sense in which it’s a pity that Anderson won’t make it here, though: he would have found a number of like-minded churchmen waiting for him.
Cape Town pastor Oscar Bougardt has repeatedly been in trouble with the South African Human Rights Commission for anti-gay comments made in public forums. I have come to the conclusion that Bougardt is a confused fellow.
He commented approvingly on an article about Islamic State executing homosexuals: “Isis, please come rid South Africa of homosexual curse.” In an interview, when asked whether he would serve a gay person a meal, he replied: “Of course! I am not a gay-hater!”
Speaking as a homosexual, allow me to decline your Sunday lunch invitation in advance, pastor.
Bougardt has left a rousing statement of support on Anderson’s blog. “Believe me if I say homosexuals are in the minority,” it begins. I literally don’t know a single person who would dispute that, but maybe when you move in the paranoid circles of evangelical pastors you start to lose touch with numerical reality.
“These sodomite fruitcakes” — I must say, that phrase made me chuckle — “think that South Africa and the world only belongs to them. I am also under constant verbal attack for preaching the truth.” Bougardt promises that “another crusade” in Cape Town is on the way to spread Anderson-adjacent ideas.
When it comes to homophobic pastors in this country, though, Bougardt is the Coke light. The full-bodied real deal is Errol Naidoo from the Family Policy Institute, who managed to blame the Marikana massacre on gay people. Naidoo is a shiny, handsome fellow with lovely thick hair. He is so committed to his anti-gay agenda that he even attended the Pink Loerie Festival in Knysna a few years ago. “The whole experience left me feeling physically ill,” he later recorded.
I know exactly what you mean, pastor. Whenever I’ve been to the festival I’ve needed a good few days to recover after.
The reality is that Anderson must not lose sleep over South African souls. We don’t need him here, preaching his hate. We have enough homegrown pastors to do that for us.