Over the weekend, a Brazilian politician tweeted an image of two gay men kissing, but he defined the simple kiss as an “obscene” act and he also said that it should be punishable with prison time.
Federal Deputy for São Paulo, Colonel Tadeu of the right-wing conservative Social Liberal Party, the same party as the openly homophobic Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, remade the comments in a tweet last Saturday (9 March). He tweeted a photo of two men kissing at a January 2018 event in São Paulo. Seen in the background of the photo is former President of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, appearing to be having a great time.
The Politician wrote: “Do you prefer a president who denounces obscene acts (art 233c Penal penalty of 6 months to 1 year of detention) or the one who considers art?”.
Você prefere um Presidente que denuncia atos obscenos (Art 233C Penal Pena de 6 meses a 1 ano de Detenção) ou aquele que considera arte ? pic.twitter.com/FysMQATAVn
— CORONEL TADEU (@CoronelTadeu) March 9, 2019
Last week, Bolsonaro tweeted out a video of one man urinating on another during Brazil’s famous Carnival.
“I don’t feel comfortable showing it, but we have to expose the truth to the population,” he wrote. “This is what many streets have turned into in the Brazilian carnival.”
Many criticized Bolsonaro for his tweet, as inappropriate for a president and also for bad intention on trying to jeopardize the Brazilian carnival image around the world.
Tadeu’s comment compares two men kissing to an obscene act as the one Bolsonaro tweeted. He also suggests such an act can violate the country’s penal code and be punishable with six months to one year of prison.
Brazil is already one of the most violent countries in the world: 61,619 homicides were committed in 2017 according to the Brazilian Public Security Forum. Nearly 170 people are killed every day, including a young black man every 23 minutes, a woman every two hours and an LGBT+ person every 19 hours. Human and environmental rights defenders are particularly threatened and increasingly targeted.
One of the biggest concerns about this new government is the impact of Bolsonaro’s hate speech in legitimising his supporters’ hatred towards LGBT+ people. There was already an increase in hate crimes motivated by politics during the presidential campaign, with over 70 cases against LGBT+ people registered during the last three months.
The fear is that now that the person who rules the country is openly homophobic, his supporters will feel that they are allowed to do whatever they want against the LGBT+ community. This could cause irreversible problems in an already violent society already.
Over the weekend, during the carnival celebrations, a man was attacked by six police officers in São Paulo. During one of the “blocos” (street party), Guilherme Kieras was trying to find shelter when it started raining, according to the victim, he was with his friend under a tree when the police approached them saying that he was not allowed to stay there, Guilherme asked why and he was brought to behind the police cars as we can see in the video, where they punched him on his face and hurt him all over his body.
The attackers are under investigation and prohibited to work until the end of the investigation.
It just shows the impact of the president Bolsonaro’s hate speech has had towards the minorities. The aggressions are coming from someone whose duty is to protect the citizens, not to attack them.
© 2019 GCN (Gay Community News). All rights reserved.
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