Taylor Swift’s VMA virtue-signaling wildly distorts the Equality Act – Washington Examiner

Taylor Swift just delivered an award-winning performance in virtue signaling.

Swift’s video for the song “You Need to Calm Down” also won an award at last night’s Video Music Awards. This isn’t just any Swift song, but rather it’s her most political. The song is supposedly a gay-rights anthem, and the music video includes a call on viewers to sign a petition supporting the so-called LGBT rights bill the Equality Act. It’s no shocker, then, that Swift’s acceptance speech got political.

She said: “In this video several points were made, so you voting for this video means that you want a world where we’re all treated equally under the law.”

Swift went on to slam the White House for its failure to support the bill. But the pop star’s rant lacks any understanding of policy, and offers yet another reminder that most celebrities have no idea what they’re talking about when it comes to politics.

Swift says the Equality Act “basically just says we should all be equal under the law.” This is a gross oversimplification and insults the many people, including gay conservatives such as myself, with serious and substantial objections to the bill.

First off, the Equality Act does a lot more than just make people equal. It adds sexual orientation and gender identity to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, enshrining full protections under the law and trampling over the right to religious freedom enshrined in the First Amendment. In cases of competing rights claims, the Equality Act mandates that sexual and gender minorities win by default, when current standards under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act allow for a weighing of both sides. This doesn’t make gay and transgender people equal — it elevates their rights over those of religious minorities.

Plus, the Equality Act goes beyond sheer support for equality to radically redefine core concepts in our society. For one thing, the Equality Act’s definition of “public accommodation” is so open-ended and expansive that it would basically apply to almost anyone offering a service, even single-person businesses run from home. This sets up crazy nightmare scenarios, like one where a woman operating a waxing service from home could be forced by the law to wax a transgender woman’s (biologically male) penis and testicles.

But elites like Taylor Swift think you’re a bigot for opposing such a bill.

And the Equality Act’s radical re-definitions don’t stop there. It also re-defines sex — not gender — under the law as subject to self-identification. Many Americans, likely including Swift fans of varying political backgrounds, are simply not comfortable with eradicating biological sex under the law, and that doesn’t make them evil opponents of equality.

Ultimately, though, the expansive Equality Act is not the only option for those who wish to expand anti-discrimination laws to protect sexual and gender minorities. An alternative “Fairness for All” approach would add reasonable employment protections for both groups, with clear carve-outs for religious organizations in light of the importance of First Amendment rights.

This is the true path forward for gay rights, but we’ll never get there if woke elites like Swift keep lecturing Americans and misrepresenting reality to implicitly condemn anyone who doesn’t agree with their liberal agenda.