Singer-songwriter Taylor Swift on
Saturday, the first day of Pride, urged her home-state senator to
support passage of the Equality Act, a federal bill which seeks to
add protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation
and gender identity to existing civil rights laws.
The bill cleared
the House earlier this month and President
Donald Trump has signaled his opposition to passage.
“I respect your position in our
community and your ability to really impact positive moves forward,”
Swift said in an open letter to Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander, a
Republican. “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.”
(Related: Nancy
Pelosi: Passage of Equality Act shows respect for Constitution.)
Swift, 29, also took a swipe at a
statement released by the Trump administration after the Equality Act
cleared the House. A senior administration official said that the
bill includes a number of “poison pills.”
“I personally reject the President’s
stance 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,’” Swift wrote.
“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,’” Swift
continued. “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.”
Republican leadership in the Senate is
unlikely to bring the bill to the floor for a vote.