Ian Paisley Junior has said a senior political adviser should not work for the Ulster Unionists because he had married his gay partner.

Steven King, an adviser to the Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, is said to have married his French Canadian partner in a ceremony in Canada before returning to Belfast.

Paisley, justice spokesman for the Democratic Unionist party, told the BBC: "Most people in Northern Ireland find homosexual relationships offensive and indeed obnoxious and I say that from the position of research I have done."