Elton John is planning to wed his partner of 12 years, David Furnish, according to news headlines. Yes, even the Voice of America and CNN" say John and Furnish are "to marry."
But the United Kingdom doesn't offer gays what American activists call "full marriage equality"; instead, Britain has a civil partnership act which allows same-sex couples to register their unions and receive most of the legal rights and responsibilities that married couples enjoy. A separate religious ceremony is optional and at the couples' discretion. (The AP story does seem to get this.)
Here in the U.S., a far larger number of voters (and political leaders) seem ok with civil unions or domestic partnerships, but not ok with same-sex marriage. That's a big reason why so many states have recently passed constitutional amendments which ban gay marriage (and which increasingly have also banned civil unions, too, though that's sneaked into the language).
Some have argued that rather than demanding full marriage equality right now, a better strategy would be to work for civil unions in the belief that (1) people will soon treat civil unions as if there were, in fact, marriages, which seems borne out by the Elton John coverage, and (2) after that happens and Americans get used to the idea, merging civil unions into full marriage won't seem like such a big deal.
But domestic gay activists are now firmly ensconced in the "full
marriage now" movement, which seems more likely to lead to no
same-sex marriages outside the most liberal states (Massachusetts
and perhaps California) for a very long time, and may bring down
civil unions in the backlash as well.