White House hits back at Taylor Swift's plea for passage of Equality Act, says it's 'filled with poison pills'
On August 28, the White House responded to the House of Representatives passing the Equality Act Bill, which was championed by Taylor Swift during her performance at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards (VMAs).
Taylor performed on the song "You Need To Calm Down," on the awards' stage on August 27, which also later won the "Video of the Year." During her performance, the words "Equality Act" appeared on the screen, referring to the piece of legislation that would prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Although the Bill was passed by the House over the summer, it still has to be approved by the Senate and it does not have the support of the president. A statement from a White House spokesperson later said: "The Trump Administration absolutely opposes discrimination of any kind and supports the equal treatment of all; however, the House-passed Bill in its current form is filled with poison pills that threaten to undermine parental and conscience rights."
Trump administration statement was also echoed by president's counselor Kellyanne Conway. “I would love to ask her audience if they even know what that is, [what] the Equality Act is and isn’t,” Conway said during her appearance on Fox News. “She’s welcome to her opinion. I can tell you there’s a lot of poison pills in it.”
A number of cast members from the music video from the LGBT community appeared on the stage along with Taylor as she accepted the award for "You Need To Calm Down."
“Regardless of who we are, regardless of how we identify, 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,” she said during her acceptance speech.
The petition in question was started on Change.org and directed toward the U.S. Senate. It had garnered over 500,000 signatures at the time of writing this article. "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," Taylor added while accepting the award.
According to Fox News, the White House is only officially required to make a statement on petitions filed on their platform which collect 100,000 signatures within a month.
"In excellent recent news, the House has passed the Equality Act, which would protect LGBTQ people from discrimination in their places of work, homes, schools, and other public accommodations. The next step is that the Bill will go before the Senate," the "Equality Act" petition stated.
It added: "While there’s no information yet as to when the Equality Act will go before the Senate for a vote, we do know this: Politicians need votes to stay in office. Votes come from the people. Pressure from massive amounts of people is a major way to push politicians towards positive change. That’s why I’ve created this petition to urge the Senate to support the Equality Act."