By international standards, Iran's election is not free and fair. Candidates are vetted by the Guardian Council and all democratic, liberal, secularist, left-wing and women candidates are banned. The media is censored. There is no open political debate. Dissenting opinions are suppressed and liable to result in arrest.

The new homophobic law is not just about the LGBT community and its rights. It is symptomatic of President Putin's increasing authoritarianism and his wider crackdown on civil society. His autocratic Czarist pretentions and methods have become more evident with every passing year in office.

This is no time for complacency. Church leaders and right-wing peers are determined to derail the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. They plan to introduce a wrecking amendment, arguing that equal marriage has little public support.

The government says it will consider allowing heterosexual couples to form civil partnerships - but only five years after gay marriage has been introd...

The calls for banking reform are growing. About time. The big crash was more than five years ago. Since then we've had Libor rate-fixing, bonuses for failed financiers, massive fines for malpractices by leading banks, mis-sold PPI, interest rate swaps, fraud, money-laundering and tax dodging. Scandal after scandal. Are we mugs or masochists? Why do we put up with it? The rot has got to stop.

While The Queen has spoken approvingly of the UK's many races and faiths, for six decades she has ignored LGBT Britons. If she treated black and Asian Britons in the same way, she'd be denounced as a racist. Why the double standards? The monarchy is homophobic - if not by conscious intent, then certainly by default.

This is a resounding, historic victory for love and equality. We are on the cusp of ending the last major legal discrimination against gay people. This vote for equal marriage is the culmination of the struggle for homosexual equality that I and others began in the 1960s. We are nearly there.

Why should politicians govern love? And who has the right to deny anyone the chance to love who they choose, man or woman?

Men convicted of consenting gross indecency with other adult males are no danger to the public. None of them should have been subjected to DNA sampling. Manchester police have apologised. Other forces have not, so far. I hope they will follow Manchester's lead.

Uganda's notorious 'Kill the Gays' Anti-Homosexuality Bill will soon be revived in parliament. The country's prime minister Amama Mbabazi' has indicated that the government of Uganda might not back the harsher aspects of the bill but may agree to a crackdown on the advocacy of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) human rights. This may not be as bad as the death penalty but it is still a grave infringement of freedom of expression and a violation of the Ugandan constitution and international human rights law.

The slurs against me are actually a back-handed compliment; proof that the BNP takes me seriously and has been damaged by my criticisms - now and in years gone by. They want revenge.

I read the stories that surrounded the scaling-down of this year's WorldPride with a sense of dread and just a little déjà vu.

The World Pride organisers have made mistakes and must share some of the blame for the current fiasco. However, they are not the sole villains. The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, could have rescued Pride but has apparently chosen to not do so. The actions and inactions of the Greater London Authority (GLA) have compounded the problems that Pride now faces.

The Coalition for Marriage has amassed 559,000 signatures against same-sex marriage; many of whom signed in the false belief that the government was going to force religious institutions to marry same-sex couples. This issue is not about numbers. It's about principles.