The Elton John AIDS Foundation supports various HIV programs around the globe and has raised more than $400 million for the cause, said Biography. Furnish is committed to cause as much as John, and serves on the organization’s board. Furnish and John solidified their relationship with a 2005 civil partnership ceremony in England. When Britain legalized same-sex marriage in 2014, the couple changed their status from partnership to marriage, getting hitched on December 21, the date of their first official union. “When we married in 2014, it felt like that fact was accepted by the world,” John wrote on his Instagram in 2017. “For David and I, being able to openly love and commit to one another, and for that to be recognized and celebrated is what makes life truly worth living.”
The two began thinking about parenthood during a 2009 trip to the Ukraine, in which they visited HIV-positive children in an orphanage. They met a 14-month-old boy that they tried, but failed, to adopt. “He stole our hearts,” John said to Parade. The country wouldn’t approve the paperwork because of John’s age and the fact that the country didn’t consider the couple’s marriage legal.
John and Furnish continued their quest to become parents, and their son, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John, was born in 2010 through a surrogate. Elijah, their second son, entered the world on January 11, 2013, via the same surrogate. “She is a wonderful, kind, and loving woman,” said John in The U.S. Sun.
