The lecture was hosted by Oxford University's LGBTQ society and many members of the audience had been attracted by the deliberate title, which Anderson said was designed to "piss people off and get a big audience".

Dr Anderson said the talk was intended to "empower people....to cast off conservative 'Oxfordian' beliefs". During the two-hour lecture, topics covered ranged from anal sex, bestiality and incest to religion.

Anderson, a sociologist in the department of sports studies at the university of Winchester, came out of the 'closet' in 1993 as America's first openly gay high school coach.

When it was suggested that Anderson is a sexual "predator", he said "yeah" and laughed. Anderson claimed to have had had sex with "easily over a thousand people". He said: "I like sex with 16, 17, 18 year old boys particularly, its getting harder for me to get them but I'm still finding them....I hope between the age of 43 and the time I die I can have sex with another thousand, that would be awesome, even if I have to buy them, of course, not a problem, you pay for all kinds of entertainment and pleasure."

When asked whether he thought he had taken emotional or physical advantage of some of the thousand people he had slept with, Anderson replied that he thought that team sports were "more damaging" to adolescents than sex. He went on to claim: "The damage that's caused by child molestation is socially constructed by the western world;" he contrasted this to other cultures where children engage in sexual activity with adults as a rite of passage.

He said that he and his boyfriend like to travel on cruise ships because "it's like sex tourism, which is just amazing" and "I always screw the dancers". He went on to say "we stop at a different port every night, go to a gay club every night and have sex with people....you don't need to know their names".

On the topic of religion, Anderson, an atheist, said: "Islam is a horrible, homophobic, awful, disgusting religion", when asked by a member of the audience how he could tar the whole religion with the same brush, Anderson responded: "the whole religion is predicated on the inferiority of women". He said that Christianity was: "the most disgusting religion in the history of mankind". He called the Archbishop Rowan Williams an "arsehole", "a total bigot" and "a #$%&^!ing liar".

Annis Stead, the president of the University LGBTQ society, acknowledged that Anderson's comments had been controversial, she said: "We do understand that some people may have been offended by the talk.... As with any invited speaker, the LGBTQ society does not necessarily endorse his views. We would hope that audience members and the community at large recognise that Eric Anderson speaks only for himself and not for any wider conception of the lgbtq community."

Katie Colliver, OUSU LGBTQ Officer said that Dr Anderson "perpetuates a false and dangerous stereotype with which the LGBTQ movement is rightly no longer associated".

In response to criticism of his lecture, Anderson said: "I only advocate for willing sex between two people of legal age. When asked about the age of consent, I responded that I thought it was "about right." I advocated for casual, consensual sex only.

"There was very little contestation of what I had to say, and a group of students joined me for drink after."

One student who attended the lecture said: "He argued the topic well, I really enjoyed it. He dispelled lots of myths surrounding anal sex and I think such frank, open discussion is a positive thing."

Anderson said he had been taken aback by the prevalence of homophobia amongst academic institutions: "The places I expected to be very open minded, like my prior university, the University of Bath, Jesus, they practically ran me out of town because they couldn't stand my research". The University of Bath declined to comment on his accusations.

END