At the MTV Video Music Awards on August 26, Taylor Swift won the video of the year award for her latest song “You Need to Calm Down.” It’s a song that trashes anyone still dissenting from the LGBTQ agenda and begs them to “control your urges to scream about all the people you hate / ‘Cause shade never made anybody less gay.”
The network news shows gushed over her leftist activism and the “Taylor Effect” they expect it to provide. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos said, “she’s doing it the way she does her music … with intent and with intelligence.”
What is Swift’s political agenda here? She’s pushing a bill called the Equality Act, sponsored by gay Congressman David Cicilline and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR). As she sang her song about the haters, MTV put the words “EQUALITY ACT” in huge bold letters above her.
Swift lobbied her MTV fans in her acceptance speech. “You voting for this video means that you want a world where we are all treated equally under the law, regardless of who we love, regardless of how we identify,” she assured, and they fawned all over her.
In her Change.org petition, which she boasted has more than half a million signatures, Swift argued, “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.”
That’s flat-out wrong. The so-called “Equality Act” enables anti-religious hatred and bigotry. The law would insert “sexual orientation and gender identity” into the Civil Rights Act and expand the definition of “public accommodations.” The bill amends “stadium” and inserts “stadium or other place of or establishment that provides exhibition, entertainment, recreation, exercise, amusement, public gathering, or public display.”
Then the laundry list unfolds, as they add “any establishment that provides a good, service, or program, including a store, shopping center, online retailer or service provider, salon, bank, gas station, food bank, service or care center, shelter, travel agency, or funeral parlor, or establishment that provides health care, accounting, or legal services.” There’s even more, including, “any train service, bus service, car service, taxi service, airline service, station, depot, or other place of or establishment that provides transportation service.”
The Family Research Council warns that you can expect that over-broad definition of “a good, service, or program” to apply to churches, religious private schools and nonprofit social-service groups. It also warns that “attorneys will likely be required to represent homosexuals in dissolving their same-sex ‘marriages,’ Christian schools will likely be required to offer transgendered students the bathroom of their choice, and Christian homeless shelters will likely be required to accommodate same-sex couples.”
The bill explicitly sets out to guarantee that religion cannot be used as a defense: “The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 … shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application or enforcement of a covered title.”
The LGBTQ orthodoxy shreds dissent. There is no debate allowed. There are “allies” like Taylor Swift, and there are “hateful” people who must be punished. This oppressive regime started in Hollywood and aspires to end in every corner where people still cling to their Bibles and their guns — their other cause.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.