DON'T WORRY, TFM RECOGNIZES IT!

Congratulations to Melissa Etheridge, who is now engaged to be married!

Singer-songwriter Melissa Etheridge and actress Tammy Lynn Michaels (Popular) announced that they are engaged and will be married by year's end.

The forty-one-year-old, Grammy-winning Etheridge and the twenty-eight-year-old Michaels issued no specifics about the date of the ceremony, only that it would be "a 2003 holiday wedding." The marriage will be the first for both women. Etheridge has two children from her relationship with Julie Cypher, her partner for twelve years; they split in September 2000, months after the couple revealed that David Crosby was the biological father of their children. Etheridge and Michaels met early the following year.

I hope that the ceremony takes place somewhere other than, say, Burlington. Yes, I know that same-sex marriage is legal there. Hell, that's part of why I dig Howard Dean so much. But I want them to do this somewhere else, if only as an emphatic "fuck you" to the Ashcroftians around the country. One interesting thing about Etheridge is her broad, two-toned appeal. Her music has a blue-collar, working-class ethic to it (most evident in the Springsteen influence that's all over her music), but it's also socially liberal in some ways (yes, I know, particularly that one).

Anyway, this is happy news. I have no plans to get married in the near future, but I salute Melissa and Tammy nevertheless!