Taylor Swift premiered her music video for “You Need To Calm Down” and it’s crammed with LGBTQ celebs and allies. The track, which calls out haters and gives a shout-out to GLAAD, prompted a surge in donations to the LGBTQ rights group when it was released earlier this week.
Featured in the video are Ellen DeGeneres, Laverne Cox, Karamo Brown, Antoni Porowski, Jonathan van Ness, Bobby Berk and Tan France, Ciara, RuPaul, Jesse Tyler Ferguson and husband Justin Mikita, Billy Porter, Adam Lambert, Adam Rippon, Ryan Reynolds, Hayley Kiyoko, Todrick Hall, Chester Lockhart, Dexter Mayfield, Hannah Hart. Swift also humorously patches up her longtime feud with Katy Perry.
The clips ends with an appeal from Swift for viewers to sign a petition for Senate support of the Equality Act, and reads: “Let’s show our pride by demanding that, on a national level, our laws truly treat all of our citizens equally.”
In recent weeks, Swift, lobbied Senator Lamar Alexander for passage of the Equality Act, and made a massive unsolicited $113,000 donation to the Tennessee Equality Project, an LGBTQ rights group working to overturn discriminatory legislation in the state.
Wrote Swift in the letter to Alexander: “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. 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, non-binary or transgender parents, sons or daughters.”
Over the weekend, Swift made a surprise appearance at NYC’s Stonewall Inn, singing her hit song “Shake It Off” after an introduction from Jesse Tyler Ferguson, who also joined in on a few verses.
