“I am a proud homophobe, yes.” President Jair Bolsonaro uttered this sentence back in 2013 when he was just a low-level congressman. The intolerance it represents was a constant presence in his rhetoric since he was first elected to public office in the 1990s. A year later, he was sentenced to pay BRL 150,000 in damages for saying a homophobic slur. So, it was no surprise that when Mr. Bolsonaro won the presidential election late in October 2018, countless same-sex couples grew worried that his administration would roll back Brazil’s feeble network of LGBT rights.
Same-sex marriage in Brazil has a short—and contested history.
In 2011, the Supreme Court decided LGBT couples should enjoy the same marriage rights as their heterosexual counterparts—despite the Constitution defining the concept of ‘family’ as an entity formed by a man and a woman, or a parent and their children. “The absence of a law [establishing the notion of families formed by same-sex couples] does...
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