Macklemore: “If you like being free like me, get the ACLU card today.”

Rap superstar Macklemore is urging his fans to get the card “that lets my gay friends marry the hell out of each other.”  That’s the ACLU’s legendary membership card. “If you like being free like me, get the ACLU card today,” the award-winning rapper advises in a video he launched today (www.aclucard.com). 

"There is no other organization that I believe in more. The tireless work of the ACLU to preserve the freedoms of all people in our country inspires my music and my deepest connection to my human community,” explained Macklemore.

Macklemore and his partner Ryan Lewis won an MTV award for Best Video with a Message for their song “Same Love.”  The song became an anthem for R-74, the referendum which upheld Washington’s law granting marriage rights to same-sex couples. The ACLU of Washington has long worked for equal treatment of lesbian and gay relationships and served on the referendum campaign’s coordinating body. Macklemore spoke about his support for the cause in a video produced for the ACLU-WA’s 2012 Bill of Rights Dinner.

Now Macklemore is asking people to become ACLU members. “I’ve got a lot of things to do during the day.  So something like being beaten with a club, pepper-sprayed, and tased for expressing my political views would really slow me down.  That’s why I carry the ACLU card,” he says in the 50-second video.

It was produced by the ACLU-WA in partnership with the Wexley School for Girls, a Seattle-based ad agency. “Free speech, marriage for same-sex couples, and reproductive freedom – Macklemore  addresses civil liberties issues that really matter to his fans and the ACLU,” said ACLU of Washington executive director Kathleen Taylor. “And he does so humorously and irreverently. That’s the beauty of it.”