Elton John: 'I Have To Get Married'

Photo by M. Sharkey for Out

"Listen David and I are [a] very high-profile gay couple, probably the most high-profile gay couple in the world," Elton John told CNN's Christiane Amanpour in a recent interview broadcast on the cable news network. "You have to set an example. If you say, listen, guys, this is our rights--can you imagine 20 years ago? We'd have never thought this possible."

In the interview, Sir Elton John confirmed that he and David Furnish planned to marry on the "first day" that the same-sex marriage act for England and Wales comes into force in 2014, according to PinkNews.

Out magazine photographed John and Furnish for its 2012 Out100, who have two children together and held a civil partnership in December 2005 on the day that it became legal in the U.K. In the music legend's recent memoir, Love is the Cure, he discussed how he had embraced his status as role model, especially after Ryan White's treatment after being diagnosed with AIDS during the early years of the epidemic: "My life was up and down like a fucking yo-yo," he wrote. "My sense of values was buried under my self-destruction... In the end, the Whites would do far more for me than I ever did for them."

Sir Elton also has a planned performance in Moscow next month, but he said he wouldn't be cancelling it despite the country's anti-gay laws. "I'm going to go. I've been going there since 1979, and I have had great times in Russia," he said, adding. "What's happening there is so awful. But I've been asked to go. People from the LGBT community over there have said, 'Please come.' I don't want to abandon them. I mean, if you don't go, you know, you're saying, 'Stick it.' "