Brazil must not become ‘gay tourism paradise’, says Jair Bolsonaro
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro gestures during a ceremony of presentation of new diplomats’ credentials at Planalto Palace in Brasilia, on March 8, 2019. (SERGIO LIMA/AFP/Getty)
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro has reportedly declared the country must not become a “gay tourism paradise,” in his latest anti-LGBT+ comments.
The far-right president, who previously claimed he’d rather his son were dead than gay and calls himself a “proud homophobe,” said: “If you want to come here and have sex with a woman, go for your life.”
“But we can’t let this place become known as a gay tourism paradise. Brazil can’t be a country of the gay world, of gay tourism. We have families,” he continued, according to Brazilian magazine Exame, as reported by The Guardian.
Bolsonaro’s latest attack on the LGBT+ community was strongly rebuked by LGBT+ activists.
David Miranda, a Brazilian LGBT+ activist, told the Guardian that Bolsonaro’s actions are not that of “a head of state — this is a national disgrace.”
“He is staining the image of our country in every imaginable way,” Miranda added.
Jair Bolsonaro’s anti-LGBT history
In 2011, Bolsonaro told Playboy that he would rather his son die than be gay, saying: “I would be incapable of loving a gay son. I prefer that he die in an accident.”
During his presidential campaign, Bolsonaro also stood by a claim that he would punch gay people if he saw them kissing in public.
Defending the comments, the then-candidate compared gay kisses to “a paedophile’s right to have sex with a two year old.”
He told Time: “I do not kiss my wife on the street. Why face society? Why take that into the school? Little children of 6 or 7, watching two men kiss as the government wanted them to do. Is this democracy?”
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro asks: “What is a golden shower?”
And in March, Bolsonaro bizarrely tweeted a video of a man urinating on another man’s head at a carnival street party in Brazil, and then asked what a golden shower was.
Bolsonaro tweeted: “I don’t feel comfortable sharing it, but we have to expose the truth to the population so the population can be aware and always set their priorities.
“This is what many street carnival groups have become in Brazil.”
