Here Today... Gone To Hell!

Slash Talks Gay Marriage & Why He's Against Proposition 8

March 23rd, 2010

Big hat guitarist Mr Slash tells the Quietus about why he's an advocate of gay marriage... even if he doesn't entirely believe in the idea of getting hitched

The laws on homosexual marriage in California are just stupid

The thing was that they wanted to pass a law so that one way or the other it was either going to be legal to have gay marriage in California, or illegal. You had to vote on it, and that was Proposition 8 ? if you voted for it, it meant that it would become illegal, and if you voted against it meant that gays could get married. Now, I've been in Los Angeles for a lot of years and with West Hollywood being very close ? and having lived in West Hollywood ? I have a lot of gay friends; my wife especially has a lot of gay friends and when that was all going on we just felt that we should be supportive. At this point it's ridiculous that two people, regardless of their sex, can't get married. It just seems stupid.

I'm not on some sort of gay rights crusade!

You won't find me at the front of a parade rally, y'know, but there've been things that I've felt strongly about. I remember back in the day when the whole Iraq war was started, I was definitely against that and was part of a political rally against it. I'm not a politician though, and I don't like to go out in a limb and become a ?big advocate' kind of a guy, it's just not really my style.

The YouTube video I made against Proposition 8, for example, has been taken a bit too seriously

A friend of ours actually taped that, and in fact it was his idea too! I think at the time my wife was like, 'do you want to do this?' I said yeah, so we just did it then and there in the rehearsal studio. It's so funny how things can be taken too seriously, especially nowadays; you put stuff out on video and it's there forever and people take them so seriously.

A marriage, gay or otherwise, takes effort and perseverance to succeed

I've already been married once; I had to go through the trial marriage! I think a lot of it has to do with how, as people, we [me and my wife] are both put together because she's really unique and I'm not really the marriage type; she and I just have this certain kind of ?bond', and she's definitely a certain kind of girl, just a really cool and fucking rock and roll female. We first met before I got married to my first wife ? so I was like 25 and she was 18 ? and I was really taken by her, even back then. But I was way too crazy then to even conceive of going into a relationship with someone that I really cared about, so I got into a relationship with someone that I didn't really care about! Years later though, we got reintroduced and we've been together ever since. And it's hard work, relationships take a certain amount of effort but we manage to persevere, and, y'know, I love her to death and she's very loyal. We're very faithful to each other and it's a very cool, rock and roll marriage.

Regardless of my personal beliefs on marriage, no one has the right to tell two people that they can't get married

My wife might fucking shoot me for saying the wrong thing here! Personally ? and this isn't the bigger picture, this is just for me personally ? I never really believed in the institution of marriage as being necessary. With Perla [Ferrar], she and I were together for four years before marriage came up, and she was like: 'well, at this point it doesn't look like we're going to split up, what are we going to do?' And I could have just been like: 'yeah, whatever'. But she really wanted marriage and so we ended up getting married... and there you have it! I think a marriage is whatever you want it to be, y'know? Obviously it exists if you feel strongly that that sort of legal and religious bond is integral to your longevity as a couple, I'm not one of those people that have super strong religious beliefs about whether you should or shouldn't get married though. But being told that you can't? I don't think that's right.

http://thequietus.com/articles/03947-guitarist-slash-guns-n-roses-on-gay-marriage-and-proposition-8

Doug Stanhope on marriage;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXpsT3e8UsM