It is alarming that the actual impact of the crucial Ashers Bakery legal victory in the Supreme Court now looks so limited

It is six years almost to the day since the Supreme Court justice Lord Wilson gave a lecture at Queen’s University, first reported in this newspaper, in which he outlined why he thought such marriages were almost certainly going to come to the Province.

His assessment of the likelihood of such an outcome was by no means shared by everyone else.

Yet Lord Wilson was right. In fact the support for gay marriage in some ‘human rights’ quarters became so strong that there was little controversy over the fact that one political party, Sinn Fein, even for a while insisted on the introduction of same-sex marriage as one of its red lines for the return of Stormont. In the end Westminster intervened.

Remember the assurances that were given with regard to same-sex marriage in Great Britain before its introduction, that conscience objections would be observed and that churches would not be forced to perform such weddings?

That still applies, but churches are now the only places that can resist hosting out a wedding between two people of the same gender.

We report today that no venue that is licenced to perform civil marriages will be able to say no to same-sex couples. Nor will service providers, such as florists.

It means, ironically, that hospitality businesses run by people who lack religious faith are discriminated against, because they cannot, if so inclined, deem marriage as between a man and a woman and so only perform those ceremonies (people in churches still can).

But how long before that church exemption still applies?

Given how extraordinarily fast mores that held for millennia have been cast aside, will the church exemption come under pressure in six years from now, the same short interval that has lapsed between Lord Wilson’s ground breaking speech and the change in the law? If not then, in 20 years? 30?

You do not need to be fundamentalist to be alarmed at the pace of these changes or concerned at how limited the Ashers Bakery Supreme Court victory appears to be in practice.