March 24, 2000

Marching with Melissa

Melissa Etheridge speaks about parenthood, being a role model, and performing in a gay stadium concert

by Michelle Tomko

All you activists better start gearing up. Stock up on granola, chill the Evian, re-sole those Birkenstocks, and buy a new bumper sticker. There are only thirty-seven shopping days left until the big one: the Equality Rocks concert, followed the next day by the Millennium March on Washington.

This April will certainly bring a flood of national LGBT figureheads as well as their contingents to the capitol. On Sunday morning April 30, the fourth national march for queer civil rights will

commence, fol-

lowed by a rally.

The day before, at Robert F. Kennedy Stadium, the star-studded Equality Rocks concert, to benefit the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, will fill the air with celebration from both queer and straight musical artists.

Scheduled to perform are Garth Brooks,

Ellen DeGeneres, Melissa Etheridge, Anne Heche, Kristen Johnston, k.d. lang, Queen Latifah, Nathan Lane, George Michael, and the Pet Shop Boys.

At a March 7 press conference, Etheridge answered questions from 30 newspapers on topics from politics to parenting. HRC executive director Elizabeth Birch, the concert's executive producer, joined her.

The relaxed and mild mannered Etheridge made an opening statement:

Melissa Etheridge: I can say that when this was first presented to me by Elizabeth Birch and the HRC, I was like, "Oh yeah, what a great idea." It has always been sort of a dream to fill this stadium with gays and lesbians, and friends of gays and lesbians, and just people who have the same feeling.

Michelle Tomko: Do you think twice about doing something because you have kids?

M.E.: Having kids completely changes you. It makes me stand up a little bit more and look at myself and the world. I want to be a better person and the world to be a better place. Your lifestyle changes, that is something you can't help. You are not getting as much sleep and you have to get up when they get up, no matter what, and you have to be there. It is sort of a natural thing. It is instinct that happens inside of you. It has really moved me.

Q: Do you think other people in the entertainment industry relate to you differently now that you are a mother?

M.E.: I used to hang out with the Hollywood crowd, or whatever crowd we were hanging out with, and we would stay out late and just be running around, and all of a sudden my best friends are the couples with kids. They understand the schedule, and if you go out for dinner, it will be at six. It's not going to be at 10.

Q: You probably heard a lot of jokes after the revelation of David Crosby being your children's father. Do you have a favorite joke you have heard?

M.E.: Every one. They range from pretty funny to just lousy. I think Norm MacDonald was the lowest it got on the American Music Awards, but everyone said their own piece, and most of it was humorous. David took the

brunt of all that, with his colorful lifestyle and adding to his biography. I can't think of one off hand.

Q: Did you know at the beginning you were going to reveal his identity?

M.E.: We knew we would someday do it. Secrets are not the way we choose to live. This is something we didn't quite know what to do. We weren't comfortable at the time she was pregnant to say it then. We didn't know how to present that to the world. It is such an unusual thing. Then we thought we were proud of it and thought we would do it now while the kids are young, and all the brouhaha can pass over and they will never feel it

Q: Is this the first

time you will have the opportunity to perform with so many fellow entertainers who are lesbian or gay, and are you looking forward to that?

M.E.: I think this is one of the first times. Ellen and k.d. and I have been friends for a long, long time. I think this is one of the first times that we have stood in an entertainment venue together and sort of put it all together and let it all out there.

Q: What do you hope to spread through your participation in the concert?

M.E.: I just hope it is entertaining. I hope that I can live well and it can be presented well and that people can be entertained. I just come from that place where I think you can reach people sometimes deeper and further. That is what k.d. does and I do. We are here to change the world, but not by hammering them over the head.

Michelle Tomko: Does it bother you that it is predominately women?

M.E.: You go to my concerts and they are mostly women, gay and straight. That is the nature of my audience. I don't know.

It is funny because you sort of put gays and lesbians together, but we don't have much in common other than we just happen to like our own sex. We are put together in that but there are some very separate preferences and ideas and stuff. It makes for a very colorful community.

Elizabeth Birch: From its inception it is a leadership that has been co-gendered. We tried to decide on a concert that every single person would embrace and would be uplifting and very unifying.

Q: Using entertainment to make political statements, you have been closing your concerts with "Scarecrow," the song about Matthew Shepard. Jeannie Shepherd is also going to be participating in the Equality events and the march in Washington. I

am wondering if you met her, or if you know her reaction to your song, and what that might be.

M.E.: I have met her. We did not discuss my song. I didn't write the song for the Shepards. I wrote it out of my own anger and fear. I would not ever feel comfortable going, "What did you think of my song about your son?" It is not like a sweet song about a sad thing. It is a very angry, hurt piece of work. We have not talked about it. I do know that they have heard it.

Q: Do you plan to sing that song at Equality Rocks, and what do you think will be the experience singing it?

M.E.: I don't know. I haven't made up my mind. I am waiting to see what the final line-up of people are, and what the show is going to be like. If there is the right moment for that, I might.

Q: Reverend Troy Perry with Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches is estimating that 5,000 couples will be participating in the wedding at the march. Do you and Julie have any plans to participate in the wedding?

M.E.: No, Julie and I have always made an agreement that we are as committed as you will get. We would never get married or have a ceremony until it was a legal. civil issue.

Q: What kind of effect do you hope the march and concert will have on the future presidential candidates?

E.B.: I think that as a preliminary decision, Vice President Gore has determined he will be in Washington D.C. that weekend. It is where he wants to be.

I think that what the concert, and separately the march, because it is run by an incredible separate entity with a lot of support, my hope and dream would be that it would completely inspire young people and ignite their spirit into action and increase their self esteem and make them strong.

I hope that we will all be successful in building the biggest voter file ever in the history of this country for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people. The march will help to build it to at least 250,000 voters who will then be turned over to statewide organizations to organize specifically in elections, and the Human Rights Campaign has contributed a lot of funding to make sure that that can happen.

Q: Who do you like for president?

M.E.: Oh geez. I gotta go Gore all the way. He has been there and has certainly said and done the things that mean so much to us in our community. If you have ever heard Tipper talk, she is pretty motivational and pretty solid on gay and lesbian rights.

Michelle Tomko: Do you feel any pressure in the position you are in, being sort of a poster child? Is that pressure, or do you like being in that position?

M.E. It is weird. It is something that happened and I never thought, “Okay, I am going out there now, and going do this and talk about that." I never had a plan at all. It was driven by such personal need to be open and honest and not hide about my personal feelings and love and all that.

It just grows, and as we get stronger and things come up, it is like, "Of course I will talk about that." If I didn't, I would feel like a hypocrite.

The Knight initiative was hard for me. It hit me in my chest. I didn't understand. I try

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