Melissa Etheridge on being a gay teen in the 1970s: “It was scary for my generation”

Melissa Etheridge could not have picked a more high-profile way to come out publicly than at Bill Clinton’s Presidential inauguration in 1993.

The Grammy-winning singer, now 52, recalls a far different climate when she was a teen in the 1970s and living in Kansas and first began to realize that she is a lesbian.

‘You know, I’m like – “Wait a minute, what am I doing?” – that it’s a scary thing,’ she tells Dan Rather on ASX TV. ‘It was scary for my generation. But you realize,the first time I kissed a girl I was 17 and that’s when it was like, “Oh.” It was a huge difference.’

Etheridge adds: ‘It’s funny, you don’t try to hide it, it’s hidden because it doesn’t exist. And so you know what you’re doing is wrong and everyone’s gonna be freaked out by you.’

A mother of four through two previous high-profile relationships, Etheridge is now engaged to Emmy Award-winning writer/producer, Linda Wallem.

She says last June’s US Supreme Court rulings gutting the Defense of Marriage Act and killing California’s Proposition 8 made a personal difference for her.

‘There’s a little bit more sense of I’m not so afraid to hold her hand,’ she says of Wallem. ‘I’m not so afraid to go to the school and, they have two mommies, you know? It’s not so strange anymore. It’s starting to be a part of the American fabric.’