Celebrities support gay unions

(China Daily)
Updated: 2009-05-28 07:53

LOS ANGELES: George Takei and his longtime love, Brad Altman, are still legally wed. So are Ellen DeGeneres and Portia De Rossi. Both couples tied the knot during the five-month window when same-sex marriage was legal in California.

But the state Supreme Court's decision on Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8, the gay-marriage ban approved by voters in November, made legal nuptials impossible going forward and Hollywood isn't happy.

Several of its heavyweights opened their wallets to oppose the measure last year. But on Tuesday, celebrities took to the Web. Celebrity blogger Perez Hilton used his site to call the court's decision "wrong wrong wrong!" and urged his readers to protest.

"Gay and lesbian residents of this state are being denied the same rights, privileges and protections that heterosexual couples have when they marry civilly," Hilton blogged. "That is NOT right! That is not fair! That is wrong wrong wrong! This is about equality!"

"I'm sure you heard the prop 8 news," DeGeneres wrote on Twitter. "One day when everyone is treated with full equality, we'll look back and realize how wrong this was."

"That's just awful," Elton John said in an interview on AccessHollywood.com. "When you see places like Iowa saying yes, there's now five states in America (where same-sex marriage is legal). California is supposed to be a progressive state. It defies logic to me. I'm very disappointed."

(China Daily 05/28/2009 page11)