For LGBTQ2 Pride Month, which is June, Taylor Swift has penned an open-letter to a Tennessean senator in hopes to gain his support in passing the Equality Act.
While the House already approved legislation for the Equality Act, Swift has urged her fans via Instagram to write letters to their own senators in order to help pass the bill once it reaches the U.S. Senate.
In the 29-year-old’s own words, the Equality Act “protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in their places of work, homes, schools, and other public accommodations.”
Swift shared the letter written to Lamar Alexander, a Republican senator, alongside a lengthy caption explaining why she wrote it and why the Equality Act affects not only the LGBTQ community, but everyone else too.
“Happy Pride Month!” she began in the post. “While we have so much to celebrate, we also have a great distance to go before everyone in this country is truly treated equally. The next step is that the bill will go before the Senate,” added Swift.
“I’ve decided to kick off Pride Month by writing a letter to one of my senators to explain how strongly I feel that the Equality Act should be passed,” she continued. “I urge you to write to your senators too. I’ll be looking for your letters by searching the hashtag #lettertomysenator.”
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In her letter, Swift first praises Alexander for co-sponsoring a resolution to honour the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment — which says that no American should be denied the right to vote based on their sex.
The Wildest Dreams singer then highlights the vulnerability of the LGBTQ2 people without the Equality Act in place and how discriminating them “based on who they love or how they identify” is “un-American and cruel.”
“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 adds.
She then warned the senator that anti-LGBTQ2 ideologies — which she calls “Slate of Hate” — would ultimately tarnish business and thousands of potential employment opportunities in not only Tennessee, but in the U.S. as a whole with major corporations like Amazon, Lyft and Nike among many others.
In her post, Swift took a shot at U.S. President Donald Trump, who she said had remarked that the Equality Act is “filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights.”
“I personally reject the President’s stance that his administration ‘supports equal treatment of all.'” wrote Swift. “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 wrong with being anything other than heterosexual and cisgender,” she continued, “which is an incredibly harmful message to send to a nation full of healthy and loving families with same-sex, non-binary or transgender parents, sons or daughters.”
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In conclusion, Swift wrote: “Please, please think about the lives you could change for the better if you were to vote to support the Equality Act in the Senate and prohibit this harsh and unfair discrimination.”
Although it’s currently unknown when the Senate will vote on the Equality Act, Swift has created a petition in hopes to urge senators to support the bill.
“The fact that, legally, some people are completely at the mercy of the hatred and bigotry of others is disgusting and unacceptable,” wrote Swift.
“Let’s show our pride by demanding that, on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally.” she concluded.
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Swift’s ‘Support the Equality Act’ petition can be found through Change.org.
As of this writing, it has received more than 100,000 signatures of a 150,000 goal.
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Aside from her work as a social activist, Swift is still taking names in the music industry.
Although she’s revealed no definite details on the status of her upcoming seventh studio album, we know that the album’s title is hidden somewhere in her most recent music video, Me! — which features Panic! At the Disco‘s Brendon Urie.
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