Brad Pitt Gives Away $100,000 to Support Campaigns for Gay Marriage

With marriage equality measures going to polls in less than a week, Brad Pitt has announced that he will donate $100,000 in support of Human Rights Campaign, which is fighting to legalize the same-sex marriage.

The "Tory" star said that he will contribute up to $100,000 matching every dollar donated by Americans to these ballot measure campaigns in the next 24 hours. Marriage equality measures will go on ballot in Maine, Maryland, and Washington on Nov 6.

"It's unbelievable to me that people's lives and relationships are literally being voted on in a matter of days," Pitt said in a statement available with HRC. "In Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington, voters will go to the polls to decide if gay and lesbian couples - our friends and neighbors - are worthy of the same protections as everyone else."

"But that's the system we have and I'm not going to back down from the fight for loving and committed couples to have the ability to marry. Especially when groups like the Human Rights Campaign are fighting these battles day-in and day-out," he added. "So, here's what I'm going to do. If you make a contribution to these ballot measure campaigns in the next 24 hours, I'll double it - every dollar of the way, up to $100,000."

"By Election Day, HRC will have invested $8 million in efforts to expand marriage equality over the past two years, including $5 million in the four ballot measure states this year.  HRC has staff on the ground in each of the campaigns and is currently engaged in the organization's largest ever election year mobilization to put these campaigns - and other endorsed candidates - over the top," HRC said in its blog.

Brad Pitt has been advocating the legalization of same-sex marriage. In 2008, he donated $100,000 to the campaign against California's 2008 ballot proposition Proposition 8, which restricted the same-sex marriage.