Do You Remember: When Melissa Etheridge Revealed the Father of Her Children (and It Was David Crosby?!)

Which celebrity donor helped to make America’s most famous lesbian couple parents?

Mary Jo: Oh, Suzanne. Loosen up. It's the '90s.

Suzanne: Yeah, well—it's not the gay '90s.

(Designing Women.)

Here’s the thing, though. It kind of was the gay ‘90s.

(Image via Giphy.)

The 1990s saw incredible advancements in both LGBTQ+ rights and representation. Following the devastation of the AIDS epidemic (and Ronald Reagan’s wilful mismanagement of it), the queer rights movement pushed back and clawed their way to the forefront. Legislative change happened across America, offering employment protections in many states as well as important advancements in healthcare and civil rights. Equal marriage campaigning became mainstream in a new way and came close to fruition in many places, right up until Bill Clinton signed into law the Defence of Marriage Act to appease the hard right in the midst of the era’s puritanical culture war (the more things change…)

On film and TV, more and more gay characters began appearing on TV, including same-sex commitment ceremonies on shows like Friends. Granted, this representation was spotty at best, often veering right into gay panic. The YouTuber Matt Baume delves into this in greater detail so please check out his excellent work (and his book Hi Honey, I’m Homo!, a study of queer visibility on the American sitcom.) Celebrities started coming out of the closet too, from George Michael to k.d. lang. Pedro Zamora helped destigmatize AIDS to a new generation via his appearance on The Real World. Ellen DeGeneres made history by coming out in real life and on her TV show (you can read my piece on her iconic Time cover here.) I bring this up because I want to establish that this was a time of change, and a real sense that things were moving forward at a rapid and largely welcomed pace.

In 1993, while attending an event to celebrate the inauguration of President Clinton, musician Melissa Etheridge came out. That same year, she released her most popular album, savvily titled Yes I Am. Etheridge used her increased fame to draw attention to queer causes, including her work with the AIDS organization L.A. Shanti. She boycotted playing shows in Colorado over its passage of Amendment 2, which would have prevented any city, town, or county in the state from taking any legal or judicial action to recognize LGBTQ+ people as a protected class. Etheridge, as one of only a handful of prominent out lesbians in mainstream entertainment, received a lot of press attention.