Products You May Like
It’s Pride Month, and Taylor Swift took a moment to speak to her fans and the LGBTQIA+ community during her Eras tour concert in Chicago, Illinois, this week.
“I’m looking out tonight, I’m seeing so many incredible individuals who are living authentically and beautifully, and this is a safe space,” Swift said while seated at her piano.
“This is a celebratory space for you,” she went on. “One of the things that makes me feel so prideful is getting to be with you and watching you interact with each other, being so loving and so thoughtful and so caring.”
The Midnights singer continued, “Being with you during Pride Month, getting to sing the words to ‘You Need To Calm Down’ where there are lyrics like, ‘Can you just not step on his gown?’ or, ‘Shade never made anybody less gay,’ and you guys are screaming those lyrics. Such solidarity. Such support of one another and such encouraging, beautiful acceptance and peace and safety. And I wish that every place was safe and beautiful for people of the LGBTQ+ community.”
The pop star went on more specifically about the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation taking over the country right now.
“We can’t talk about Pride without talking about pain,” she said. “Right now and recently there have been so many harmful pieces of legislation that have put people in the LGBTQ+ and queer community at risk It’s painful for everyone. Every ally. Every loved one. Every person in these communities.”
Swift added, “And that’s why I’m always posting, ‘This is when the midterms are. This is when these important key primaries are.’
She told the audience to consider the politicians on the ballot and ask themselves, “Are they actually advocates? Are they allies? Are they protectors of equality? Do I want to vote for them?”
Swift has had a tendency to stay quiet about politics or social issues, but in her 2020 Netflix documentary Miss Americana, she talked about wanting to change that.
“When you’re saying that certain people can be kicked out of a restaurant because of who they love or how they identify, and these are actual policies that certain politicians vocally stand behind, and they disguise them as family values, that is sinister,” she said. “So, so dark.”
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.