Lesbian/Bi Celebrity Girlfriends, Part 2

After your favorable response to our first article on the subject, we decided to take another look at the (often) behind-the-scenes women who love and support the higher-profile women in their life.

Most of them are not yet as well known as Portia De Rossi (wife of Ellen DeGeneres) or Tammy Lynn Michaels (partner of Melissa Etheridge), but we thought you'd like to get to know a little more about them.

Melanie Goldstein (fiancée of actor Kirsten Vangsness)

Just this week, Kirsten Vangsness, the out star of the CBS crime drama Criminal Minds, announced her engagement to longtime girlfriend Melanie Goldstein, an assistant editor on Fox tv show 24.

Goldstein proposed to Vangsness in November, but the couple only recently shared the news with family and friends.

They told People.com that they plan to marry this Spring at the Texas home of Goldstein's parents, with Vangsness adding, "and since it's not official anywhere until things change – which I have total confidence that they will – we're going to do it there just to completely thumb our nose at the government."

Melanie Goldstein and Kirsten Vangsness

The two met five years ago at a party Vangsness was attending with her then boyfriend. Vangsness told AfterEllen.com in an interview in September, “I remember looking at her across a table and just thinking, 'Oh sh*t — oh sh*t! — everything is going to change.' And it did — gradually."

Vangsness separated from her boyfriend and ultimately came out, but after a rocky attempt at a friendship with Goldstein, the two of them didn't speak for several years. Vangsness told us,

“I sent her an apology letter — you know, because when you come out, you kind of lose your mind. You turn into a 13-year-old again. So I sent her this apology note. She was living her life, and I was living my life, and I didn't expect things to happen. I was just saying, 'Hey, I'm sorry, and I just wanted to let you know that I'm out now, and I think I'm more sane, and I just wanted you to know that and to say that I'm sorry.' So I was just sort of cleaning up my stuff.”

The apology worked, and the two have been together ever since.

Melanie Goldstein and Kirsten Vangsness

Vangsness told People.com, "I never thought I would want to do it. Then when you meet the person, you're like, 'I want to marry you. I don't care if there's a law against it!'"