Elton John recently donated $20,000 to Fair Wisconsin to help fight the amendment to ban same-sex marriage that will be on the ballot there this November 7, it has been revealed. Elton joined with his longtime partner David Furnish in his own civil partnership ceremony in Windsor, England last December.
The Wisconsin battle is a fierce one, as the amendment is favored by 50% of registered voters, according to a poll released on Monday. It is favored by 52% of likely voters and support for the ban is strongest among those over age 45.
Opponents of gay marriage plan to “spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a last-minute ad blitz” in the coming week before the election. Their first salvo in the fight was this heinous ad using children:
Here are a couple of the ads that Fair Wisconsin has been running opposing the ban.
Senator Russ Feingold has stated his opposition to the ban consistently. Here’s what he said in April: “I will be voting against the harsh amendment that’s been proposed in Wisconsin, and I thought it was an appropriate occasion to indicate my feeling that if two people care enough about each other to get married, that it probably is a positive thing for society. Gay and lesbian people in our country are fighting a mean-spirited movement to harm them and to discriminate against them. I stand with them against that movement, and I’m proud to stand with them.”
Not everyone is so enlightened. In September, two lesbians were attacked at a diner in Wauwatosa after another diner objected to their conversation about gay marriage.
Everyone in Wisconsin needs to get out and vote against this ban. And convince those who live there to do so as well. Eight states are currently considering legislation to ban gay marriage ( Virginia, Tennessee, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wisconsin). Remember Ray Vahey and the late Richard Taylor, Wisconsin residents who were together for 49 years yet were never able to realize the dream of seeing their union legalized. Taylor died over the summer, but not before the two were able to make what difference they could in fighting the ban in Wisconsin.
Said Vahey at the time: “Richard and I met and fell in love in 1956. For 49 years, we have yearned for a marriage recognized in America. Yet until this year, we had never come out in a public way. We decided this cause is not only worth it to us but to millions of others…Euphemisms like ‘partnership’ or ‘union’ set us apart from society. Substitute terms that categorize and separate us become our yellow Star of David badges…Here at home, African-Americans learned long ago that ‘separate but equal’ is not equal.”
