Elton John to Congress on AIDS: Do more

Sporting pink glasses, wearing a wedding ring and accompanied by his husband, Sir Elton John testified in the Senate on Wednesday that Congress can and must do more to end HIV/AIDS completely.

It's time to change the course of history, said John, the global entertainer, LGBT champion and AIDS activist.

A British citizen, John was knighted for his decades-long efforts to raise money to fight a killer disease that has not yet been fully disarmed, through his Elton John AIDS Foundation.

"This Congress indeed has the power to end AIDS," John told a Senate appropriations subcommittee on U.S. global health programs.

"There is a window of opportunity before us — a window through which we can very clearly see the end of AIDS — within my lifetime," he said. "We cannot afford to let that window close."

He urged Congress against reducing funding to U.S. programs involved in the global effort against HIV and AIDS.

He also decried the "stigma" against people who have HIV or AIDS, especially in some African countries where laws against being gay hamper efforts to treat people who are sick.

Celebrities and stars testify in Congress all the time about all kinds of topics. In fact, Bono was supposed to be at the same hearing that John attended but was still recovering from a serious bike accident last year, according to subcommittee chairman Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

John was testifying before a panel that included Republicans who oppose same-sex marriage (John and husband David Furnish were married in Britain last year), and who voted against laws to prevent job discrimination against gays.

That would include Graham, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, who with the ranking Democrat, Sen. Pat Leahy of Vermont, invited John to testify. Later, Graham was happy to line up for a grip-and-grin photo with John and Furnish.