#Brazil Wave of LGBT weddings before Bolsonaro takes office
In recent weeks, hundreds of LGBT couples have participated in collective or individual weddings for fear of not being able to do so after Bolsonaro's inauguration on January 1.
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Photos: House 1
Since far-right Jair Bolsonaro was elected president of Brazil on October 28, LGBTI+ people have been on high alert and living in fear. The homophobic statements of the former military officer and a cabinet comprised of many members of evangelical churches—which have declared themselves against "gender ideology"—threaten the future of hard-won rights.
This led hundreds of LGBT couples to participate in collective or individual weddings in recent weeks for fear of not being able to do so after Bolsonaro's inauguration on January 1.
Although there is no law legalizing same-sex marriage, same-sex couples have been able to marry since 2013, thanks to a 2011 Supreme Federal Court ruling that legalized civil unions. For the LGBTQ+ community, this judicial decision is now at risk.
[READ ALSO: #Brazil A trans woman was stabbed to death while shouting “Yes to Bolsonaro”]
“In his first speech as president-elect, Bolsonaro placed his hand on the Bible and said he was going to govern for a family that isn’t ours. That made us rush to exercise a right that is still here,” Joao Burnier, a 41-year-old psychologist, told the Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper. Joao decided to marry his partner of two years not only as “an act of love but also as a political act.”
Senator Magno Malta (PR/ES), an ally of Bolsonaro, is one of the biggest detractors of same-sex marriage and has already announced that he would seek to suspend the benefit granted by the STJ.
In a 2011 interview with Playboy magazine, Bolsonaro said he could not love a gay son. “I would rather one of my sons die in an accident than see him out there kissing another man,” the president-elect said. In another interview, he said that a gay son is the result of “not having beaten him enough.”
[READ ALSO: Lana from Holland: “Being trans in Brazil means living in danger every day”]
That's why Maria Berenice Dias, the president of the Sexual and Gender Diversity Commission of the Chamber of Lawyers of the Federal Council of the Brazilian Bar Association, shouted to the four winds this week: "Run and get married!" And hundreds listened and are doing it.
[READ ALSO: #BRAZIL Marielle Franco was murdered: feminist, Afro-Brazilian, and lesbian councilwoman]
Casa1, an NGO that runs a shelter for homeless LGBT people, held a fundraiser and a group wedding for 40 couples on December 15.
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