Taylor Swift jumped back into the political arena with a bang on Friday.
The singer knocked President Donald Trump’s stance on LGBTQ+ issues as she launched a campaign aimed at convincing senators to support the Equality Act.
Taylor acknowledged in a note on Twitter celebrating Pride Month, which starts on 1 June, that while there was “so much to celebrate, we also have a great distance to go before everyone in this country is truly treated equally.”
The White House’s recent passing of the Equality Act — to protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination at work, home and school — was “excellent news,” she wrote. But it is still to come before the Senate.
So, Taylor called on her fans to write to their senators to ask for them to support the act ― and share their messages on social media with the #lettertomysenator hashtag.
Taylor also launched a Change.org petition which demands that “on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally.” It had garnered more than 25,000 signatures by early Saturday morning.
“Politicians need votes to stay in office,” she wrote in her note. “Votes come from the people. Pressure from massive amounts of people is a major way to push politicians towards positive change.”
“Our country’s lack of protection for its own citizens ensures that LGBTQ people must live in fear that their lives could be turned upside down by an employer or landlord who is homophobic or transphobic,” she added. “The fact that, legally, some people are completely at the mercy of the hatred and bigotry of others is disgusting and unacceptable.”
Taylor, who lives in Nashville, also shared the letter that she herself had sent to her own senator, Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander:
In it, she said she personally rejected Trump’s reported claim that his administration “‘supports equal treatment of all,’ but that the Equality Act, ‘in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.’”
She continued:
“No. One cannot take the position that one supports a community, while condemning it in the next breath as going against ‘conscience’ or ‘parental rights.’ That statement implies that there is something morally wrong with being anything other than heterosexual and cisgender, which is an incredibly harmful message to send to a nation full of healthy and loving families with same-sex, nonbinary or transgender parents, sons or daughters.”
Taylor broke her political silence in 2018 when she backed Democratic candidates in the midterm elections and encouraged her fans to vote. Last month she made a $113,000 donation to the Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group.
Trump, meanwhile, faced a backlash on Friday after he pre-empted Pride Month celebrations with a tweet that was widely panned due to his administration’s repeated attempts to erode LGBTQ+ rights.