POWER IN NUMBERS

Taylor Swift Starts Petition Urging Senate to Back the Equality Act and Protect LGBTQ People

The singer also urged her fans to send letters to their senators demanding they pass the legislation to protect LGBTQ people.

Taylor Swift launched a petition late Friday urging the Senate to support the Equality Act and protect LGBTQ people from discrimination. The legislation was passed by the House in mid-May but has not been taken up yet by the Republican-controlled Senate. “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. The fact that, legally, some people are completely at the mercy of the hatred and bigotry of others is disgusting and unacceptable,” Swift wrote in the petition on Change.org. Within less than an hour, the petition had gained nearly 10,000 signatures. The singer also urged her followers to write letters to their senators demanding that the Equality Act be passed, and she attached a copy of her own letter she said she’d already sent to Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN). Calling it “un-American and cruel” for people to be subject to discrimination based on “who they love or how they identify,” Swift told Alexander “the refusal in our own state’s Legislature to protect LGBTQ people” could “cripple” Tennessee from bringing new jobs to the state.

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