Out comedian Billy Eichner has praised
Taylor Swift's LGBT activism after she faced backlash for her new
single “You Need to Calm Down.”
In the video for the single, Swift and
a number of openly LGBT celebrities from Laverne Cox to Todrick Hall
and Queer Eye's Fab Five are living a rainbow-colored life in
a trailer park as homophobes protest on the sidelines. The video ends
with an appeal to sign a
Change.org petition calling on the Senate to take up 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 legislation cleared
the U.S. House last month and President Donald Trump has signaled
his opposition to the bill.
(Related: LGBT
groups respond to Trump's opposition to Equality Act: “We're
Disgusted.”)
Swift, who previously donated
$113,000 to defeat anti-LGBT bills in her home state of Tennessee,
faced backlash on social media, with some commenters saying that she
was profiting off the LGBT community.
(Related: Kevin
Swanson: God will “cut down” Taylor Swift over support for LGBT
protections.)
Speaking with Variety, Eichner,
who joked on social media “I guess I was too gay for the Taylor
Swift video” in response to not being asked to take part, praised
Swift.
“You know I think overall we need all
the allies we can get,” Eichner
said.
“I was really genuinely impressed by
how vocal Taylor was during the [2018] midterm elections, telling her
following to vote, coming out on behalf of Democrats even though
she’s from the south and a deep red state.”
“I really thought that was so
important. She got so many people into the system who now will
hopefully continue to be in the system and continue to be politically
engaged,” he said.