Tennessee-born beauty Cybill Shepherd definitely isn’t one to waste words -- and had she no qualms in speaking out about who she thought was to blame for the passing of Proposition 8 in California's last election, which led to gay and lesbian marriage rights being overturned.

"The Mormons and Catholics," she told Tarts at the recent L.A Gay & Lesbian Center’s "An Evening With Women" celebration in Beverly Hills. "Most of the money came from Utah, it’s very unfortunate."

However Shepherd does feel that President Obama is doing enough for the cause.

"I think he is working hard at it, I really do. I am just so encouraged by Iowa and Vermont. We have a tough road ahead in California, but we'll be hittin’ within a year," she added with confidence.

The 59-year-old’s passion to pursue the fight for Gay & Lesbian rights actually stemmed from Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.

"He was killed in my hometown of Memphis, three and a half miles from my high school and I’m a product of the segregated south and I got to see that hatred up close, live that hatred, colored only, whites only, and when he was killed I was stricken with guilt and shame," Shepherd added. "I felt as though I hadn't done enough to help the civil rights cause and as I gradually began to understand, what is the most recent excuse to deny people rights under the law? To treat them as less than human and once you get that kind of right thinking you realize how important it is to stand up for the gay and lesbian kids who are at greater risk because they don't have community support and sometimes their parents kick them out. Particularly in L.A we have more runaways then anywhere in the world."

So when it comes to Shepherd’s own faith, she’s developed quite the hybrid of religious convictions.

"I’m a Christian Pagan Buddhist Goddess worshiper, but I’m also a feminist. I think the ultimate glass ceiling is God, in another words, if we think God is a man, then we make man a God, and I studied and learned that there is a whole other history of the worshiping of the great mother," she explained. "I really think that probably God is a woman, that helped me to break through that celestial glass ceiling."