Taylor Swift Wrote A Powerful Open Letter About LGBTQ Equality
As pride month begins, celebrities like Swift and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are demonstrating allyship on social media.
It’s been over a month since she released a single, and there’s still very little information available about her upcoming album, but today Taylor Swift is promoting a far more important project: LGBTQ+ equality. On the first day of Pride Month, Swift posted a letter addressed to Republican Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander. Swift writes that “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,” and implores him to vote for the Equality Act in the upcoming Senate vote. In the well-researched letter, which takes two posts to fully capture, Swift also cites statistics showing that the majority of Tennessee residents (including Swift herself) “support laws for protection of LGBTQ people against discrimination,” and notes that this issue has the potential to affect Tennessee’s economy, with many companies preferring to do business in states with stronger anti-discrimination policies. Swift even calls out President Trump’s recent statement on the bill, writing that his words “impl[y] that there is something morally wrong with being anything other than heterosexual and cisgender.
In her caption, Swift asks followers to use #lettertomysenator to show their own letters, and directs them to an online petition in support of the Equality Act.
This isn’t the first time Swift has used Instagram to raise awareness about a political issue. She also posted in favor of Democratic Tennessee senate candidate Phil Bredesen last year, and publicly donated money to the March For Our Lives campaign to end gun violence.
Across the pond, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex also commemorated the start of Pride Month with an Instagram post. The @Sussexroyal “rotates” the accounts it follows based on charities and organizations Meghan and Harry wish to raise the profile of, and this month it’s groups like the Elton John Aids Foundation, The Trevor Project and It Gets Better. The account also posted a collage of nine images, including one of Harry’s late mother Princess Diana visiting HIV-positive Gerard McGrath in the hospital as part of her AIDS activism work. In the caption, The Sussexes wrote, “We stand with you and support you ?Because it’s very simple: love is love.”
Related: Cracking the Case of Taylor Swift’s T7 Easter Eggs
Celebrate Pride Month with a Look Back at San Francisco’s LGBT Scene in All Its Harvey Milk-Era Glory
Harmodius and Hoti at the Castro Street Fair, August 1975.
Harvey Milk in front of his Castro Street Camera Store, ca. 1977.
Castro Street Fair, featuring a moving art piece by Violet Ray, August 1982.
Club Chaos and Klubstitute float in the SFLGBT Pride Parade, June 1989.
Castro Street Fair, ca. 1976.
SFLGBT Pride Parade, June 1990.
Scout on Castro Street, June 2015.
Anne Kronenberg driving newly elected supervisor Harvey Milk in the SFLGBT Pride parade, June 1978.
Castro Street on Harvey Milk’s birthday, the day after the White Night riots, May 1979.
Harvey Milk as a Ringling Brothers/Barnum and Bailey clown for a day, May 1978.
Harvey Milk for Supervisor campaign volunteers , including Harry Britt, Carol Carolson, and Harvey Milk, greeting morning commuters, 1976.
Robert Morgan as David Hockney, June 1982.
Leon Lott, December Wright, and Larry Williams at the Castro Street Fair, August 1976.
Blonde Sin’s Doris Fish, June 1980.
Halloween on Polk Street, October 1976.
Peppe Olvadez at the Castro Street Fair, August 1977.
