Taylor Swift called out Trump for ignoring her Equality Act petition at the VMAs
Taylor Swift opened the 2019 VMAs with a performance of her single "You Need To Calm Down" -- in which she famously, finally, Said Gay Rights. She picked up the Video For Good award for the clip, peppered with celebrities and icons of queer pop culture, but allowed her co-executive producer and BFF Todrick Hall to give that acceptance speech.
When she won the fan-voted Video Of The Year, however, she took the mic and proceeded to back up the video's message, surrounded again by Hall as well as other members of the YNTCD cast such as Trinity the Tuck and Jade Jolie.
"In this video, several points were made, so you voting for the video means that you want a world where we're all treated equally under the law, regardless of who we love, regardless of how we identify," she said.
"At the end of this video there was a petition, and there still is a petition, for the Equality Act, which basically just says we all deserve equal rights under the law. And I want to thank everyone who signed that petition because 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."
Upon which she exaggeratedly glanced at her wrist, tapping at an imaginary human-rights watch.
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The petition, which is at just over 500,000 and still climbing thanks to the VMAs bump, urges the U.S. Senate to pass the Equality Act, which has already passed the House. The Act would essentially bring federal anti-discrimination laws in line with current state legislation, banning discrimination "on the basis of the sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition of an individual, as well as because of sex-based stereotypes."
Petitions hosted on petitions.whitehouse.gov that gather over 100,000 signatures within 30 days earn an official response, but there's no such policy for Change.org petitions.
Caitlin is Mashable's Australian Editor. She has written for The Guardian, Junkee, and any number of plucky little music and culture publications that were run on the smell of an oily rag and have since been flushed off the Internet like a dead goldfish by their new owners. She also worked at Choice, Australia's consumer advocacy non-profit and magazine, and as such has surprisingly strong opinions about whitegoods. She enjoys big dumb action movies, big clever action movies, cult Canadian comedies set in small towns, Carly Rae Jepsen, The Replacements, smoky mezcal, revenge bedtime procrastination, and being left the hell alone when she's reading.
