Melissa Etheridge Refuses to Pay Taxes Over Gay-Marriage Ban

• Nov 7, 2008 04:24 PM ET
• by Adam Bryant

Melissa Etheridge

Melissa Etheridge is putting her (tax) money where her mouth is.

Responding defiantly to the passage of California's Proposition 8, the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter suggested in a blog post on The Daily Beast that she will not pay her state taxes in protest of the gay-marriage ban, People reports.

Etheridge writes that if she's not "allowed the same right [to marry] under the state constitution as any other citizen ... I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes, because I am not a full citizen."

Etheridge announced in October that she and longtime partner Tammy Lynn Michaels intended to legally marry after a California Supreme Court decision allowed for same-sex marriage. (The couple exchanged vows at a commitment ceremony in Malibu in 2003.) As such, she joined celebs like Brad Pitt, Ellen DeGeneres and Mary J. Blige in opposing the constitutional amendment to overturn the court's ruling.

Now that the amendment has passed, Etheridge may have missed her chance, and hundreds of gay couples, including George Takei and Brad Altman and DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, could have their unions retroactively invalidated.

Despite the temporary setback, Etheridge, a long time gay-rights activist, seems prepared to continue the fight. "Gay people are born everyday," she writes. "You will never legislate that away."