Melissa Etheridge: Prop 8 ‘Blatantly Hateful’

Melissa Etheridge is speaking out loudly against California’s Proposition 8 ballot measure, which would amend the state constitution and deny same-sex couples the right to marry.

“Prop 8 is a blatantly hateful, and fearful proposition that I believe the great citizens of California can see through,” the musician wrote in an essay for The Daily Beast.

“Now, I know my preference of life mate freaks some people out,” she added. “Maybe it is just their fear of sex or intimacy. I know that they hold up the bible and say that it’s wrong. Fine, let me stand before my creator and take any consequences there might be to living my life in truth and balance with my spirit.”

“I called my son over. I said ‘Read this, tell me what you think,” she wrote. “He, being 9 years old and very proud of his reading skills, read ‘Changes California Constitution to eliminate right of same sex couples to marry.’ He looked at me, very matter-of-factly and said, ‘Wow, that’s lame.’”

Melissa wed wife Tammy Lynn Michaels in 2003, the day after then-Gov. Grey Davis gave same-sex couples domestic partnership rights.

“They were limited rights, but doggone it, it was a beginning,” she wrote, remembering her happiness at the ruling earlier this year that legalized same-sex marriage. “We told our children about it and all danced around the room in family glee.”

Melissa and Tammy now have four children, including 2-year-old twins, but while adopting daughter Bailey Jean in 1997, she and former partner Julie Cypher didn’t have the same options as heterosexual couples.

“The social worker would come to my house numerous times, evaluate me, have me fill out all of the forms and then regretfully deny me my right to adopt my children because California law prohibited social workers from adoption approval of same sex couples,” she wrote, noting a judge overruled the decision.

Celebrities including Brad Pitt, Ellen DeGeneres, T.R. Knight, Pete Wentz and Steven Spielberg have donated huge dollar amounts to defeat the proposition, and Melissa seemed hopeful that it would not pass.

“I will be waking up with my children on November 5th and I will be fixing them breakfast as I usually do. I look forward to telling them that prop 8 was defeated. I am sure my son will say, ‘Good, that was lame,’” she concluded.