Elton John has lashed out against America's "hateful" attitude toward homosexuality, calling on California to lift its ban on gay marriage. The English singer, who entered into a civil partnership with David Furnish in 2005, said he was "fed up" with being treated like a "second-class citizen" in the United States. "As I get older," he explained, "I get more angry about it."

Although John has long been an ardent supporter of LGBT rights, he has not always been vocal in the movement to legalise gay marriage. In 2008, the singer encouraged American activists to abandon the campaign for marriage rights, fighting instead for British-style civil union legislation. "If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership," he told USA Today at the time. "I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership."

But as the 63-year-old appeared at a fundraiser last week in Beverly Hills, he seemed to have changed his stance, lobbying for the repeal of California's controversial Proposition 8, which outlaws same-sex marriage. "I think I have it all," he said. "I have a wonderful career, a wonderful life ... [And yet] I don't have everything because I don't have the respect of people like the church or politicians who tell me that I'm not worthy, that I'm lesser because I'm gay. Well, fuck you!"

Performing for almost two hours, John helped raise more than $3m (£1.87m) for the American Foundation for Equal Rights' legal challenge of Proposition 8. "In this country, we need more dialogue," he told the Associated Press. "We don't need any more stone throwing. We don't need any more vitriol. We need people to say, 'OK. I'm straight. You're gay. Let's get along'."

In a follow-up interview, the star also criticised recent comments by Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, the Church of England's former bishop of Rochester, who said that by adopting a child, John and Furnish "will affect the welfare of the child, psychologically and in other ways". "Jesus was a wonderful, compassionate man, who forgave on the cross," John said. "The dogma of the church can be so hateful and divisive. It's stuck in the stone age. We don't live in the stone age any more. The church is losing people left, right and centre because people are fed up with the rhetoric that they're giving them."