Sir Elton Gets Equality

E.J. Graff
December 21, 2005

E.J. Graff, a Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center resident scholar, most recently collaborated on Evelyn Murphy’s book Getting Even: Why Women Still Don't Get Paid Like Men--And What To Do About It (Simon & Schuster, 2005). Her first book was What Is Marriage For? The Strange Social History of Our Most Intimate Institution (Beacon Press, 1999, 2004).

Today Elton John makes an honest man of his longtime love David Furnish. After a dozen years together, the happy couple will celebrate their commitment in two parts: first with a private civil ceremony in Windsor Guildhall, the venue used recently by the Prince of Wales, and then with a blowout party at his mansion nearby, complete with vintage pink champagne and a star-studded 700-person guest list.

Americans may still be making uneasy jokes about gay cowboys, but it’s same-sex wedding time in the UK. More than 1,200 couples are scheduled to plight their troth this week alone in Northern Ireland, Scotland, England, and Wales. They can’t legally use the sacred M-word: Tony Blair’s Labor Party wasn’t willing to go quite as far as the wild and crazy nations of Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and South Africa, all of which have fully gender-neutral marriage laws (or, in South Africa’s case, soon will). But with the long-awaited implementation of its Civil Partnership Act , passed in 2004, Britain is finally catching up to the rest of the ex-Commonwealth and to its Western European neighbors. Australia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, New Zealand, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland all recognize same-sex pairs more or less comprehensively under some word other than “marriage.” Even Croatia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic have recently moved forward on same-sex partnership laws, albeit with recognitions so minimal that local gay and lesbian groups are in a huff. And yet those disgruntled Slovenian same-sex couples still have fuller legal recognition than do their counterparts in the United States.