Religious groups' opposition to equal marriage is causing deep rifts among their leaders and followers - and among Tory MPs.

David Pollock on how the the American religious right continuing its advance into Europe as Senior Legal Counsel at the Alliance Defence Fund is elected to the Advisory Panel of European Fundamental Rights Platform.

It's a Bank Holiday, half the staff in the newsroom are on leave, but news editors still have to somehow fill their papers and their broadcast bulletins. What easier way to do it than to draw on the ready-made Easter sermons of various bishops and Cardinals around the country?

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, gave an Easter reception for Christian leaders at Downing Street this week at which he delivered an unctuous speech of such disingenuousness and hypocrisy that it almost takes the breath away.

Let's get one thing straight. There is no right to wear a cross in the workplace. What is more, there has never been a right to wear a cross in the workplace.

This has been a brilliant propaganda coup by the Christian activists who have struggled so hard (and spent so much money in the courts) to plant in the minds of the British that religion – and in particular, Christianity – is under fire in this country.

In many ways there is more at stake than gay marriage. This is the Catholic Church trying to bully its way into political power, lobbying by intimidation and emotional blackmail.

The activities of the anti gay marriage lobby reveal the complex network of the homophobic religious right

The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, has warned the government that if it tries to legalise gay marriage, it will face a huge onslaught from religious bodies.

Terry Sanderson on how the Church seems to want it both ways. It wants to be exempt from the law on religious grounds, but it also wants to pretend that it is the "nation's church" serving everyone without fear or favour.

Last week, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), Trevor Phillips, wrote an article in the Sunday Times in which he expressed concern about the way in which the Human Rights Act is being abused and, as he put it, "used in ways which any reasonable person would describe as thoroughly bonkers".