Quotes of the week

It's so important that the government recognises the mistakes it made and guarantees it won't make them again… If I'd had inclusive and compulsory sex education at school, I don't think I'd be HIV positive today.

At a time when hate attacks against Muslims are having a serious impact on many people, let us try to ensure that obfuscation through the use of the term 'Islamophobia' does not take away from the real-world problems facing Muslims.

If the [sexual] act is not ordered towards creation, then it is not procreative and therefore it is not a legitimate expression of sexuality, as far as we are concerned.

You can't just choose one exhibit you think might offend someone and self-censor in that manner. It's sad and unwarranted, and it's also illegal.

We are a society which is still pandering to religious lobbies.

Unacceptable; against the natural order; objectively disordered; morally wrong.

When I wear robes, I have no religion.

Fanatical and deluded.

The bishop's apparent anger and energy might have been more productive at the time if it had been put into more serious investigation of allegations, as opposed to hostile rejection.

In the India where I grew up, memories of Gandhi, Tagore and Nehru were strong; the necessity of secularism was drummed into us. We knew that our politicians were largely venal, but it was still a country in which morality and humanity mattered. Now, journalists and writers who speak up against the undeclared war on Dalits, Muslims, poor people and women are trolled by cyber-mobs – if they're lucky.

If you criticise ideas, you challenge ideas, that's when you move a society forward. When you demonise people that's how you rip societies apart.

I am all too aware that these laws were often put in place by my own country. They were wrong then, and they are wrong now. As the UK's prime minister, I deeply regret both the fact that such laws were introduced and the legacy of discrimination, violence and even death that persists today.

This was never about protest. It was about small groups of strangers choosing to gather by our entrance gates where they could harass and intimidate women and try to prevent them from accessing healthcare to which they are legally entitled.

Don't let go, be the British bulldog, be tenacious. I would tell anybody out there to trust in the British justice system. Yes, it's crazily weird, but you will get justice.

Politics apart, this is horrible that some people would see this horrendous crime through a religious prism to gain some mileage. It's a new low and I don't know if we can stoop any lower after this.

There is no point in reviewing how it is taught if schools will still be allowed to ignore it.

Ladies, please take your seat… and keep it!

Two exceptionally courageous, tenacious and determined men who simply refused to give in to the lies and deceit of the church hierarchy.

Following last year's terrorist attacks, a central government has again been forced to make it look like something is being done on integration. But once again the administration of the day appears to have a faith schools policy that flies in the face of such a goal.

Those fighting injustice should be the last to demand censorship, the first to oppose it.

A terrible week with evidence of religious exceptionalism, stupidity, incompetence, lying, dumping responsibility at every level including the highest, and folie de grandeur. Bishops must be accountable. This means not just to themselves.

From the start of his career to his dying breath, he was cocooned, chastised and cared for by the institution in which he had flourished. Ultimately he was shamed, but he was not cast out.

A man has been convicted in a UK court of making a joke that was deemed 'grossly offensive'. If you don't believe in a person's right to say things that you might find 'grossly offensive', then you don't believe in freedom of speech.