I cannot control the behavior of anyone, however, I am respectfully asking all of you as fans and friends to please be respectful of what I am trying to accomplish as an artist. Please be respectful of the places where I am performing by being aware of the actions that can possibly turn potential fans away from my music or from my future shows. I want EVERYONE to feel comfortable coming to my shows - and from what I've been told, people are not comfortable because of this behavior. If this means you cannot continue to support me or come to my future show! s, then I will understand and respect that decision. I appreciate your support up until this time.

I sincerely hope you will understand the purpose of this letter and will respect my request.

Thanks for your continued support ~
Michelle To which a fan responded:

An Open Letter to Michelle Mayfield 8.13.2002

Hi, Michelle: I got a copy of your note written to your friends and fans asking that your gay and lesbian fans, the "significant group of people who have alternate sexual preferences," do their best to hide their sexual orientation when they come to hear you perform.

You say that you are worried for your heterosexual fans who might be subject to "the potential negative reflection that may be projected upon them as fans of mine" if people realize you've got a lot of queer fans.

Gosh, I'm sure it must be hard on you to have to deal with "the outwardly show of affection that has taken place" at your shows and all those badly behaved lesbians and gay men. All those dykes humping each other's legs to the rhythm of your music and whatnot; it must be terrible. So, just to show you how concerned I am about this awful situation, me and my friends doing everything we can to make sure that all the queer-acting folks stay away from your shows in order to make sure that your squeamish heterosexual fans feel okay about being there. In fact, I'll even work on convincing the queer-acting people who do go to your shows to make sure that everyone in the venue knows they are *not* a fan of yours. That should make you really happy.

How are we going to do this? First, we'll send out the e-mail to everyone we know, so they get the idea. Then we'll also send it to e-mail groups, like Austingrrls, SublimeAustin, AustinFeminists and the NOW lists and other gay and lesbian lists around the state. I'll even make sure to send it to Aggie Pride, the gay and lesbian list for former A&M students, since, like you, I'm a graduate of Texas A&M (Class of '91. Whoop!) and Aggies like to help each other out, right? And I'll make sure to put a link to it on my website.

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