The White House has responded to Taylor
Swift's petition calling for passage of the Equality Act.
Swift's video for “You Need to Calm
Down” won the Video of the Year award at Monday's 2019 MTV Video
Music Awards. The video shows Swift and several openly LGBT
celebrities from Laverne Cox to RuPaul and Ellen DeGeneres living in
a trailer park as homophobes protest their lives on the sidelines.
The video ends with a message to support passage of the Equality Act,
which seeks to add protections against discrimination based on sexual
orientation and gender identity to existing civil rights laws.
During her acceptance speech, Swift
called out the White House for failing to respond to a petition she
circulated calling for passage of the bill.
“It now has half a million
signatures, which is five times the amount that it would need to
warrant a response from the White House,” Swift said as she
motioned as if she was checking a watch on her wrist.
The White House reissued a statement it
released in May.
“The Trump administration absolutely
opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment
of all; however, the House-passed bill in its current form is filled
with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience
rights,” the statement reads.
President Donald Trump has signaled
that he's opposed to the legislation.
(Related: LGBT
groups respond to Trump's opposition to Equality Act: “We're
disgusted.”)