The Gospel offers forgiveness for the past, new life for the present, and hope for the future.

The virtue of the civil partnerships scheme lay in the attempt to treat the needs of gay and lesbian couples as what they are, not to bundle them into some other category.

If the rights of civil partners are met differently in law to those of married couples, there is no discrimination in law, and if civil partnerships are seen as somehow 'second class' that is a social attitude which will change and cannot, in any case, be turned around by redefining the law of marriage.

Would we be a better society if we made marriage simply a private contract between two individuals, with no wider implications of kinship and family? I do not believe that we would.

Men always want to be a woman's first love - women like to be a man's last romance.

My wife has taught me about unconditional love. When there's a conflict, there's never a thought that we won't work it out.

When I married Paul, we lived in St John's Wood in London. We had nice next-door neighbours, but you don't know anyone else. Everyone lives in isolation.

I'm an avid animal lover. When I was 16, I wanted to be a vet or a zookeeper. I grew up with animals. At one time we had between five and eight dogs in the house, with four cats. We're menagerie people.