Melissa Etheridge has been named honorary co-chair of the No On Knight campaign, a movement that is seeking to vote down a California initiative that it believes is anti-gay/lesbian and targets homosexuals.
On January 28, Etheridge and her partner, filmmaker Julie Cypher, will attend a celebrity "rock and roll roast" at the Friars Club in Beverly Hills, California that will also serve as a fundraiser for the No On Knight campaign. Others expected to attend the Etheridge roast include actors Nathan Lane, Lily Tomlin, and Carrie Fisher. California voters will go to the polls on March 7 to vote on Proposition 22, otherwise known as the Knight Initiative after State Senator Pete Knight, who sponsored the measure. The text of Prop 22 states that "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California," and gay activists are concerned that the wording of the measure, though simple, could be used to attack and overturn anti-discrimination and gay/lesbian equality laws. In a special interview with "Rolling Stone," Etheridge and Cypher recently ended years of speculation and announced that it was The Byrds' David Crosby who served as the biological father to the couple's two children (see "Melissa Etheridge Identifies David Crosby As Her Children's Father").
