On Monday August 21, 2006 Jake Shears, the lead singer of the band Scissors Sisters interviewed Sir Elton John at Elton’s home in the south of France. The interview was recently published in Britain’s The Observer Music Monthly magazine. Here is a part of what Elton John had to say about world peace, politics, religion and being gay:
Jake Shears: ...”I look around this summer and the past couple of years and it seems to me that world politics have really changed the gay movement. We're on the verge of world war and there are such horrible things happening with religious clashes.”
Elton John: “I think religion has always tried to turn hatred towards gay people. Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays…in [former Soviet Bloc] countries such as Poland, Latvia and Russia there is a huge anti-gay movement and a lot of it is started by the church…I cannot stand any kind of racism or religious hatred; there's so much negativity with people. They used to put gay people in a cupboard but now they're doing it to [certain] religious people. What we should be doing as musicians is trying to bring people together… We can't keep thinking of gay people as being ostracised; we can't keep thinking of Muslim people as being [ostracised] because of the fundamentalism that occurs in Islam. Muslim people have to do something about speaking up about it…From my point of view I would ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it. I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate…The world is near escalating to World War Three and where are the leaders of each religion? Why aren't they having a conclave; why aren't they coming together? I said this after 9/11 and people thought I was nuts: instead of more violence why isn't there a [meeting of religious leaders]. It's all got to be dialogue - that's the only way. Get everybody from each religion together and say 'Listen, this can't go on. Why do we have all this hatred?'…We are all God's people; we have to get along and the [religious leaders] have to lead the way. If they don't do it, who else is going to do it? They're not going to do it and it's left to musicians or to someone else to deal with it. It's like the peace movement in the Sixties - musicians got through [to people] by getting out there and doing peace concerts but we don't seem to do them any more. We seem to be doing fundraisers for Africa and everything like that but I think peace is really important. If John Lennon were alive today he'd be leading it with a vengeance…I am totally against the war but violence is part of mankind and it's going to happen, but as musicians I think we've got to step up and say 'come on'...People don't seem to protest in the streets any more, they are always blogging on the internet. They seem to do their protesting online, and that's not good [enough]. You have got to get out there and be seen and be vocal, and you've got to do it time and time again. People have become apathetic. There was a big march in London when Britain decided to join the war against Iraq and Tony Blair is on record as saying 'The people who march today will have blood on their hands.' That's returned to bite him in the ass…We cannot solve everybody's fucking problems in the West. What we've done [in Iraq] has sped up an inevitable civil war after Saddam Hussein left power. I don't know the solution. I just know that all we can do as musicians - whether gay or straight - is to come together and promote peace. We have been promoting [anti-poverty] but when you do a concert sometimes they forget about their emotions: that's the power of music and sport - they are the two things that can do that…Dave (Furnish) and I as a couple seem to be the acceptable face of gayness, and that's great. I've got to use that power to try and do what I can - or we have - to try to make the situations in Russia and Poland [better]. I'm off to Poland in two weeks to say something there because the situation is not good. If I'm on the board of Amnesty International I can't just sit back and say nothing. It's not a gay issue; it's a human rights issue. I'm going to fight for them, whether I do it silently behind the scenes or vocally so that I get locked up. I can't just sit back; it's not in my nature any more. I'm nearly 60 years old, after all. I can't sit back and blindly ignore it, and I won't.”
Karen Fish of The Temple of Love, The World Peace Religion said today, Saturday November 25, 2006: “Bravo! We applaud Elton John on his wise and brave remarks. The Temple of Love, The World Peace Religion was founded on February 25, 2005 to answer the questions posed by Elton John and to solve them. The Temple of Love, The World Peace Religion makes peace among and unites Christianity Islam Judaism and Everyone else and the countries they all live in as the first step towards world peace. If you search “unites Christianity Islam Judaism” you will find 1,000 results and they are all from The Temple of Love, The World Peace Religion. We tie everyone together with their common threads and resolve all of their differences once and for all by using the plan laid out by God of Mount Sinai aka God the Father, Jesus Christ, The Holy Spirit, Allah, Yehovah, Elohim, etc. through every single Biblical Prophet in the Old Testament, The New Testament, the Koran and through the Prophets of every religion of God ever. God’s plan is simple and it works. Only the one word of God of Mount Sinai, “10ve”, stands between mankind and the fast approaching fires of the Apocalypse, the extinction of life on Earth forever in Nuclear World War III and its aftermath nuclear winter then ultraviolet summer.” 10ve
