Anti-Homosexual Bill In Uganda Causes Global Uproar

March 10, 2010— -- Standing onstage in black velvet robes, despite the stifling heat in the open-air church, Pastor Martin Ssempa's face is a mask of disgust.

"Anal licking!," he shouts, directing the crowd's attention to the images of hardcore gay pornography that he's projecting via his laptop. "That is what they are doing in the privacy of their bedrooms."

"Everything having to do with eating of poop…heterosexuals do not eat poop," Ssempa said. "And if they do, they are misguided, they are not real heterosexuals. We don't practice, that's an abomination. It's like sex with a dog, sex with a cow; it's evil."

Ssempa's animated style has made him one of the most popular preachers in the African nation of Uganda. But it's his virulent homophobia that's put him at the center of an international uproar. The pornographic images, which reduced some of the churchgoers to tears, were meant to whip up support for a bill under consideration in Uganda that would make some gays and lesbians eligible for the death penalty.

The bill was introduced several months after a visit by several American evangelicals, who spoke at a conference called the "Seminar on Exposing the Homosexual Agenda."

One of them was Scott Lively, a pastor from Springfield, MA, who believes that countries like Uganda can still protect themselves from what he sees as the scourge of the gay agenda.

"These are good Christians; better Christians than there are here in the states," says Lively. "They care about each other. And I think the reason they're pushing so hard on this law is that they don't want to see what happened to our country happen over there."

He told the conference's audience, made up of teachers, social workers, and politicians that "even though the majority of homosexuals are not oriented towards young people, there's a significant number who are. And when they see a child from a broken home, it's like they have a flashing neon sign over their head."

Lively, who is the president of Defend the Family, is also the author of a book called "The Pink Swastika", which argues that the Nazi Party was a homosexual movement.