hoLLy goSSip

Following the passage of California’s Proposition 8, singer Melissa Etheridge is telling government officials they can’t expect her to pay her taxes after they stripped her of her right to marry another woman.

Etheridge and other stars such as Brad Pitt, Ellen DeGeneres, Mary J. Blige, and Sacha Baron Cohen have vocally opposed the passage of the controversial constitutional amendment, which upends a California Supreme Court decision that permitted same-sex marriages. The new ban may retroactively nullify the unions of couples Portia de Rossi and DeGeneres, and George Takei and Brad Altman.

In a blog post on The Daily Beast, which you can read here, the 44-year-old singer says that if she's not “allowed the same right [to marry] under the state constitution as any other citizen. ... I am taking that to mean I do not have to pay my state taxes, because I am not a full citizen.”

Etheridge, whose five-year marriage to Tammy Lynn Michaels is not legally recognized, adds, “There is a lot I can do with the extra half a million dollars that I will be keeping instead of handing it over to the state of California.”

The singer ends her post with a message for Prop 8 backers, "Gay people are born everyday. You will never legislate that away."

You’d wish it was that easy.