As I understood it, any Church official is legally entitled to opt out of performing Gay Marriage ceremonies.

" any Church official is legally entitled to opt out of performing Gay Marriage ceremonies." But how long before that is challenged with it going all the way to European Court of Human Rights?

Isn't there/wasn't there the same sort of carry on over Divorced persons getting married in Church?

Here we are, in the 21st century, and there are still people who quite obviously don't get the point that gay people should have the right to be treated in exactly the same way as anyone else.

if they want to live in a civil partnership they can, and now, if they want to live as a legally married couple they can.

What do they get out of it? That's nothing to do with anyone but themselves. I don't have a right to say to a man and woman 'what do you get out of your marriage?' because that's a personal matter for them.

The sooner we stop behaving as though there's something wrong about gay couples wanting to live as others do the better our society will be. The church can remain locked into dogmas that go back a couple of thousand years if it likes, but I prefer to live in the real world, the one that's inhabited by fair-minded people who aren't hypocrites.