Taylor Swift has joined the battle to fight what LGBTQ activists deem a “slate of hate” bills in Tennessee’s state legislature.
The singer, who lives in Nashville, made a $113,000 donation to Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ advocacy group, on Monday.
According to the group’s petition, the 12 bills — six in the House and six in the Senate — “promote discrimination rather than justice and demean the worth of LGBTQ people in our state.”
The proposed legislation includes bills that would ban same-sex marriage in the state, protect adoption agencies that don’t want to place kids with LGBTQ parents and make it a crime for transgender people to use locker rooms that match their gender identities.
Chris Sanders, who leads the project, announced Swift’s donation in a Facebook post, where he attached an image of the letter that accompanied her donation.
“Taylor Swift has been a long-time ally to the LGBTQ community,” Sanders wrote in the Facebook post. “She sees our struggle in Tennessee and continues to add her voice with so many good people, including religious leaders, who are speaking out for love in the face of fear.”
In Swift’s letter, dated April 8, she said that she felt “inspired” by the organization’s work combating a proposed series of anti-LGBTQ bills in the Tennessee General Assembly.
“I’m writing you to say that I’m so inspired by the work you do, specifically in organizing the recent petition of Tennessee faith leaders standing up against the “slate of hate” in our state legislature,” she wrote. “Please convey my heartfelt thanks to them and accept this donation to support the work you and these leaders are doing. I’m so grateful that they’re giving all people a place to worship.”
Swift joins a handful of other opponents of the proposed legislation, including more than 120 faith leaders across the state who in March signed a statement denouncing the anti-LGBTQ measures.
“They promote discrimination rather than justice and demean the worth of LGBTQ people in our state,” the statement declares. “We call on people of good will to join us in speaking out for basic fairness.”
The ACLU has also condemned the legislation.
Swift’s donation is the latest in a slew of political statements she has made since breaking her long-held silence on political issues in October.
“In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world I feel differently about that now,” Swift wrote in a post on her Instagram page just ahead of the 2018 midterm elections.
In the 2018 post, she also announced her support for Tennessee’s Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Phil Bredesen. Though Bredesen lost to Republican Marsha Blackburn, a Trump loyalist and eight-term congresswoman, Swift’s endorsement still ignited action.
The website Vote.org reported that more than 65,000 people registered to vote around the country in the 24-hour period after Swift made her political post.
Not long after, Swift also encouraged her massive fanbase to participate in early voting.