Uganda pastor screens gay porn in church

KAMPALA, Uganda, Feb 17 - A pastor seeking to bolster Uganda's anti-gay laws which already make homosexuality punishable by life imprisonment screened gay porn in a packed Kampala church Wednesday in a bid to drum up support.

The screening was attended by around 300 supporters crammed into an evangelical church in the Ugandan capital after plans for a "million-man march" were thwarted by police.

"We had planned to have a million-man and -woman march in Kampala but unfortunately we were told that we could not march because of security concerns," Martin Ssempa told the crowd.

"The major argument homosexuals have is that what people do in the privacy of their bedrooms is nobody's business but do you know what they do in their bedrooms?," the pastor asked.

Ssempa then displayed a slide show of gay pornographic pictures.

"This one is eating another man's penis," the pastor said, before going into even more graphic descriptions.

"Is this what Obama wants to bring to Africa?" he said, following fierce US criticism of a Ugandan bill drafted last year that would further criminalise homosexuality.

It would criminalise public discussion of homosexuality and could penalise an individual who knowingly rents property to a homosexual.

Homosexuality in Uganda can in some instances be punishable by life imprisonment. The penal code identifies "carnal knowledge against the order of nature" as an offence.

The bill initially received broad political support in Uganda, a country where evangelical churches wield great influence, but attracted fierce criticism from US President Barack Obama, who called it "odious".