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Taylor Swift rejects Trump’s stance on LGBTQ rights in Instagram post

Taylor Swift arrives at the Billboard Music Awards at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on May 1, 2019. Swift says she’s kicking off Pride Month by asking Tennessee’s Republican U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander to protect LGBTQ rights and support the Equality Act. The musician, who lives in Tennessee, posted a letter on social media early Saturday, June 1 that she supported the House’s recent passage of the Equality Act, which would extend civil rights protections to LGBT people by prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. (Richard Shotwell / Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
By Travis M. Andrews Washington Post

Taylor Swift on Saturday posted to Instagram a lengthy letter to Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., imploring him to protect LGBTQ rights by voting to support the Equality Act.

The act, which cleared the House last month, would ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing, education, jury service and federal financing.

“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,” Swift wrote in a caption accompanying the post. “I urge you to write to your senators, too. I’ll be looking for your letters by searching the hashtag #lettertomysenator.”

In the letter itself, she wrote: “For American citizens to be denied jobs or housing based on who they love or how they identify, in my opinion, is un-American and cruel.”

She added that though some argue that the act “disrupts religious freedom … there are hundreds of Tennessee faith leaders who have recently (and very vocally) disagreed and spoken out to defend the LGBTQ community.” She pointed out that protecting the LGBTQ community from discrimination could bring more jobs to Tennessee, citing the fact that several corporations, including Amazon, have spoken out against “the anti-LGBTQ Slate of Hate,” referring to a series of bills moving through the state’s legislature that would allow “businesses, organizations and contractors to discriminate against LGBTQ people in employment policies,” according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Swift also mentioned President Donald Trump, who opposes the act.

“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.’ No,” Swift wrote. “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 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.”

Swift also posted photos Sunday from her performance at the Wango Tango music festival, in which she’s wearing a rainbow jumpsuit with colorful tassels. “Like a rainbow with all of the colors,” she wrote as a caption.

Swift was largely apolitical for most of her career, drawing criticism from those who believe her large platform comes with a responsibility to speak out on political issues. She stopped that practice in October, when she used Instagram to endorse Tennessee Democrats Phil Bredesen for the U.S. Senate and Jim Cooper for the House. (The former lost; the latter won.)

“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 in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now,” Swift wrote at the time. “I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country.”

She expounded on her decision to begin voicing her politics in a piece she wrote for Elle that published earlier this year.

“I’m finding my voice in terms of politics. I took a lot of time educating myself on the political system and the branches of government that are signing off on bills that affect our day-to-day life,” she wrote. “I saw so many issues that put our most vulnerable citizens at risk, and felt like I had to speak up to try and help make a change. Only as someone approaching 30 did I feel informed enough to speak about it to my 114 million followers. Invoking racism and provoking fear through thinly veiled messaging is not what I want from our leaders, and I realized that it actually is my responsibility to use my influence against that disgusting rhetoric. I’m going to do more to help. We have a big race coming up next year.”

Swift’s political leanings haven’t appeared in her music, but that could be changing with her upcoming seventh album. She recently told the German outlet DPA, “I definitely think there are political undertones in the new music I made.”