An email sent out by Jeff Flint, the head of the Yes on 8 campaign to supporters cited a USA Today interview with Elton John that came out this week where the singer said “I don’t want to be married. I’m very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership.” The email asked supporters for donations and decries the recent protests against Prop. 8. [LAT]
‘Yes on 8’ Uses Elton John’s Words to Support Cause
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Farrah
Elton John is an out of touch queen who would throw the GLBT community under the bus for his own use. Anyone remember when he performed with Eminem?
Don’t get me wrong, he’s raised hundreds of millions on AIDS but this is just insane.
Michael
Just because dreary Elton doesn’t want to get married everyone else should not get married. Plus he has that skanky royalty thing going on, Sir Elton, fuh
St. Francis of a-sissy
Farrah & Michael, maybe you two can help me here. I had a full Elton John music collection, then, when he got married to a woman, I threw it out. Then, when he came out, I bought a whole new one. Do I have to throw out my whole Elton collection AGAIN?? Or will the gay-stapo just conveniently come by my house and confiscate it?
Charles J. Mueller
Am I missing something here?
Ummm…perhaps I am living under a rock, in a cave, on the dark side of the moon, but didn’t Elton John get married back in 2005 as reported on ABC News?
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/story?id=1428837
fredo777
Blasphemy.
St. Francis of a-sissy
Charles, Elton & David Furnish got civil union-ed in ’05. Two guys still can’t get married in Great Britain.
L
Of course Elton has the benefit of a national civil partnership in the U.K. – a much more robust legal arrangement than any U.S. state civil union. That said, he should mind his own business.
Othniel
Sir Elton has shown us he remains a British Subject, a status many of us fought a war over a couple of centuries ago.
Let him preach to the House of Lords. We are American Citizens, and make our decisions.
ML
Of course this is taken out of context but I have to agree up to a point. I’ve never understood the importance of the word “marriage”. EQUAL rights are what’s important. What difference does it make what it’s called? As long as a civil partnership is TRULY equal at both the federal and state level — it just comes down to semantics. For me, the word “marriage” is tied too closely to organized religion which I have no use for. Why can’t we have one word for the civil arrangement and another for the religious designation? Or let’s come up with an entirely new word — we’re supposed to be the creative ones, right?
sparkle obama
are you girls going to boycott elton john, now?
ryan
is that surprising. he should have just kept his cocked up mouth shut.
ajax
Let’s keep in mind that the notion of Marriage Equality is generational thing. EJ is of a different generational era. (Sry L-ton. Luv u, but u r n old rinkly wite dude.) In addition, Elton John can financially afford to pay for the necessary legal arrangements to take care of Mr. Furness after his demise, and he has a staff to make the necessary legal arrangements for him. I have niether cash nor staff, but I have a man I love and I want him to be able to afford to live in the apartment where we’ve shared our lives, should I pre-decease him. Marriage fixes the transfer of assets for us the way it would for every other citizen of the US.
Paul Raposo
…Elton John can financially afford to pay for the necessary legal arrangements to take care of Mr. Furness after his demise…
That’s because Sir John left Merry Ol’ England and moved to Texas to avoid paying taxes on his substantial net worth and take advantage of Texas’ overly generous allowance of investing in property to avoid paying taxes.
That said, what the hell does Furnish think about to be able to get it up and fuck Elton?
Bruno
I notice a lot of English gays don’t seem to see the big deal over the word “marriage.” They think that Californians are making too much of a stink over the word (when in fact, we have civil unions either way). I guess they don’t mind being separate but equal over there.
I’m not sure I’d worry too much about Yes on 8 enlisting an an openly screaming queen to help their cause. It’s not bound to sway donations violently.
Mike
Good-bye, Yellow Backed Rogue! Frankly, Elton John has hardly been a roll model for the well adjusted homosexual. I personally don’t care what his preferances are; unlike, Sir John, I was borned and raised in the United States of America, and I want to preserve my marriage (my partner and I got married July 3rd), according to my own belief system. I want all the transferrable rights of marriage, and as a law abiding, tax paying citizen, I am entitled to them. Elton John’s opinions carry only slightly less weight than his music does today, which is to say it counts for very little, indeed.
St. Francis of a-sissy
Eating our own again I see. How nice…
Brian Miller
Elton John is not a US citizen. He has literally no role in this debate.
His comments about “civil partnerships” are also irrelevant. Civil Partnerships are a legal status afforded to Britons that provide all of the rights and responsibilities of marriage on a local, state, and national level.
Such “partnerships” don’t exist in the USA or California, and never did. Americans cannot get access to them, and if an effort was made to create a separate national “civil partnership” registry that provided all the federal benefits of marriage, there can be no doubt that the LDS cult and all the other usual suspects would rally against it.
michael
He’s a fucking cartoon character and has not a clue to anything or anyone in the real world. Opinions are like assholes, everybody’s got one, THANK GOD!. He does not get than even in England, civil unions were handed out to gays because its population could not stand the thoughts of same sex “marriage”. Civil unions might be technically the same there but it still sends a message. What if a gay person is religious and wants their union to reflect their religious values? Maybe its just a word but words can be powerful, very powerful. They do have meaning and connotations. Again, if you don’t wanna marry then don’t, but for those who do, its not for you to decide if they should or should not, no man or woman should decide the rights of another.
Alicia
Don’t agree with him at all but I think he is entitled to his opinion, and shouldn’t be villified because he doesn’t think the same as me or whoever else.
tommy
Is equal rights wrong? Are you so hung up on a word as to loose any forward motion. I have had 2 Husbands, no one word can describe the complex love we have for each other. Lets take a win and work on the word later. Equal rights is still the bottom line. Let go of the stupid word. The straight community has made a mockery of it anyhow.
Charles Merrill
The word Marriage is important only because it is the only union between couples recognized by the U.S. Federal government. DOMA left it up to the states to define marriage, that is what all this shit is about. Even with my legal marriage in California along with 18,000 other queers, we don’t get the big Federal rights and benefits as “one man, one woman” automatically receive. Civil Unions are nowhere near the same, and Elton should specify “in Britian”. What a dumb ass. I don’t like the word Marriage either because of the religious hokus pokus, but it is an unbreakable contract and it can only be broken by a divorce. You can get married (a civil contract) by the Justice of the Peace and leave the gods, goddesses, and sky pixies out of it.
Charles J. Mueller
Thank you for clarifying that point for me, St. Francis. I was misled by the bold headline of the ABC article link I posted.
I went back and reread it, and later on in the article, they did clarify the fact that it was a civil-union ceremony.
Had I had my thinking cap on, I would have realized that Britain still does not allow same-gender marriages. 😉
Bonnie Mc
Elton is rich and does not cae about our community. The poor and working class hate spending our tax dollars to suport heterosexual relationships while we live as second class citizens. My mother collected my fathers social security check when my father died. Do we pay for that? YES.Civil Unions do not give us our equal rights Elton why don’t you go back to your own country you inconciderate ass.
billy bones
i know more about ej, and his music than anyone on this page, i defy anyone to challenge me there, but you cant go around trying to rewrite the dictionary, gays have the right to marry, to a member of the opposite sex. that is the definition of marraige, you cannot rewrite the dictionary. how many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? answer 4, calling his tail a leg does not make it one. same with members of the same sex calling it marraige. i wonder if this reply can survive without a profanity laced response, i hope so billy
sparkle obama
@ML:
thank you.
gays want Blacks and christians to officially kiss their ass by calling it “marriage”.
obama will help us get full equal rights for spouses and you all can fight about the “verbage” after the fact.
b
billy really is correct
fredo777
@billy bones:
There’s no profanity necessary, but that is a really weak argument.
You don’t think the notion of marriage has changed + evolved over the course of human history? Or the definitions of plenty of words, for that matter?
I shouldn’t be able to marry — yes, marry — someone of the same sex because Webster’s doesn’t want to update their dictionaries.
That is nonsense.
Not sure if you’re aware of this, but a marriage is a legal partnership with legal rights + benefits afforded to couples who enter into them + come marriages are not religious ones, but civil marriages alone. That is what we are looking for, not religious or church marriages, unless of course some individual churches are willing to bless these same-sex unions (which some are, btw). At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if you think of it as just a semantic issue. Marriages come with certain legal benefits that civil unions + other such lesser “domestic partnerships” do not.
Bill + Jose shouldn’t be denied the legal benefits + name of marriage because you or your ilk think that it goes against your religion. As has been constantly beaten into the ground, we do not live in a theocracy + civil marriages, free from church control, should be available to gay couples just as they are in countries like Canada (where I believe the overall divorce rate is lower, actually).
fredo777
* + some marriages are not religious ones…
b
why?
billy bones
@fredo777: Marriage, i think, is kind of a religious term(note i said i think). so i understand if religious folk want to protect that definition. i am curious however because no words come to mind that have evolved. can you kindly give me an example of one? i do not think the notion of marraige has changed or evolved, other than from what i observe, many heteros have opted to postpone it or live together, which i think is harmful also,not so much postponing it but the latter. marraige and families is a pretty biblical concept. and our founding fathers, many were very religious men. if you go to D.C. you see God mentioned in many Govenment buildings either directly or in art. but redefining things can be harmful. i think it’s a slippery slope, and potentially harmful to society. hard to express this way because it is so time consuming, but i suspect this may be offensive to some , altho that is not my intent
billy bones
as for the nonreligious marriages, they are often perfomed by justices of the peace, but they are still marriages nevertheless
b
ok
b
so what you are saying is???
b
hmmm
b
1 more
b
well?
fredo777
@billy bones: Yes, they are marriages, nonetheless, + that is exactly what we are working towards.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that wanting civil marriage meant that gays weren’t looking for actual marriage. Far from it. I was just making the point that we aren’t demanding marriages that forces any particular church to bless them, as long as we have the same legal marriage rights.
Like I said, marriage has evolved + is still evolving with time. How, you ask? There was a time when marriage was limited to persons of the same race, for one thing. Also, I won’t pick + choose a list of specific terms in the dictionary that have evolved in meaning/connotations over time, but it’s pretty widely accepted as fact. For instance, the word “gay” was once primarily used to describe something light + happy, etc. Now, it is also synonymous with a person of the same-sex loving persuasion.
Things change + we, as humans, adapt.
b
anything new?
b
@fredo777: ihave to leave town but i will check back in a few days with a comment til then take care,billy
fredo777
I already replied, at comment #37.
I thought you were “Billy Bones”, btw.
Charles J. Mueller
I guess the lesson to be learned here, is that this is what comes from years of wearing, ridiculous-looking, over-sized glasses. It distorts one’s “outlook” on the rights of others!
Tony Hamer
Wow. Sir Elton John has raised $150MM to fight AIDS and spent decades fighting discrimination against gay people. Why would someone waste an ounce of energy infighting when there are real foes to the LGBT community? We will never make any progress until we unify and fight the principles of oppression.
sam blount
I saw a photo of Elton John on stage with a lot of young boys, they all had ballarina skirts on. I know it was about the play Billy Elliot; however to dress young boys like females is telling the world that boys that may have a gene that will make them homo may need a little push while they are young. Are really so many boys born that way? Or are they groomed to be that way by adult influances. Are all homosexual men genetically indisposed through no falt or influance? I know a young man who is a homosexual today, he was raised by his grandfather and was made to suck his grandfathers dick. Is that genetic? His grandfather hated him and called him a queir. Every human body is like a tool, it is made to function properly. You can eat soup with a chainsaw, and you can cut down a tree with a spoon; however, it takes a long time. But it is best to use each tool properly. History always repeats it’s self before the fall of great nations through out time homosexual life was always at a high point before the fall of those nations. I am sure if grown male homosexuals looked back into thier childhood they would find an adult that helped them discover they were a homosexual. Sadley this goes on and on. The vale between homosexual life styles and petafilia are so close they are more than not the same. It is pain learned as a child and repeated to another child victum after that violated child has reached adult hood. I have had conversations with homosexual men who said they were introduced into sex by adult men when they were only thirteen. Now they say I likes-em-young. Mothers are being playcated into thinking that homosexual men only have sex with other willing adult men, this is true but only partly; they have often saught out young boys to pleasure themselves because it was done to them. How do you think a mother might feel if her son grows up to have sex with men? Will he tell her it was because he was shown he was a homosexual when he was only twelve or thirten? If a little child grows up with out outside influance and feels a sexual desire for the same sex; then I say that child was the opposet sex in their past life. However that still does not make it ok to engage in homosexual behavor. Why not? Because that child was born into that tool,born into that body to learn a lesson. If born a male to learn the role of a male and partner with a female body tool. If born female to learn the role of a female while wearing a female body. If your internal entity rejects the proper use of thier tool, then they will just have to keep returning until you get it right. Are you a repeat student? Earth 101
The proper role of a male body is to be a father and kind mate to your female opposet. And the same is true for the female body. The improper role for your spirit energy is to allow your past life impulses or earthlife influances to have you engage in same sex relations. It is unhealthy for the rectum and colon to be penatrated by another male penis. The body was not designed for such action. If homosexuality was truly normal and healthy and natual the body would have been designed to except such behaivor. The truth is blood capularies are broken, often causing tearing of the colon lineing. Fecal matter is transfered up the meadis of the penis causeing infection, not to mention the fact that the homosexual community is the largest carriers of hipotitus. You can cut a tree down with a spoon, and you can eat soup with a chain saw, but why would you? To all the repeat students of earth 101.
Tallskin
@Sam Blount
Have you been beating your empty head with a bible again?
What utter bullshit you do talk! hah hah. You know nothing about history, where’d you get your historical information from? The dumb shaman at your local sky pixie temple?
You say: “History always repeats it’s self before the fall of great nations through out time homosexual life was always at a high point before the fall of those nations. ”
Yeah? When has history every repeated itself?
Name me ONE example of a great nation falling when homosexuality was at its height?
Just one?
Ancient Rome was quite happily queer and then the Emperor Constantine made that evil abomination sky pixie cult christianity the state religion, and he banned homosexuality. He died in AD 337. And Rome fell, sacked by the barbarians, in AD 410.
Are you too dumb or can you do the calculation on that? Rome becomes christian and then falls!
The Aztec Empire, very anti homosexual, virile, bloodthirsty empire. They fell to the invading Europeans. Nothing to do with homosexuality that “fall”.
See, I’ve given you two examples that prove you’re talking bullshit. I could go and on and on listing examples, but I can’t be bothered.
Now you give me example to prove your argument that : homosexual life was always at a high point before the fall of those nations.
Can you do that?