Melissa Etheridge: ‘You Don’t Get to Put LGBT People Back in the Shadows. We Will Never Go Back to That.’

In this special series, LGBT celebrities and public figures talk to Tim Teeman about the Stonewall Riots and their legacy—see more here.

Melissa Etheridge is a singer-songwriter, guitarist, and activist.

How and when did you first hear about the Stonewall Riots, and what did you make of them?

I grew up in Kansas, and didn’t hear about Stonewall until I moved to Boston (to attend Berklee College of Music) in 1979 when I was about 19 years old. I’d never been to New York City. When I heard about Stonewall, it was new information. “Wow, there are places where people can be gay and transgender.” Also, the information that we could get the crap beaten out of us if we were seen or known to be gay; and also the information, “Oh, these people stood up and rioted for us. This is getting serious here.”