The Current State of LGBT+ Rights Around the World
Brazil’s President Declares the Country is No Place for “Gay Tourists”, Anti-Gay Party Wins Seats in Spain, and Brunei Defends Death Penalty
This past week we’ve seen the president of Brazil declare his country is no place for “gay tourists”, we’ve seen the openly homophobic Vox party have major wins in the Spanish elections, and we’ve seen Brunei once again double down on harmful anti-gay rhetoric and defend draconian laws that would see homosexuality punished with death by stoning. It is perhaps a good time then to take stock of the current state of LGBT+ rights around the world.
Brazil’s far-right president isn’t known for his subtleties – you don’t get nick-named the “Trump of South America” for nothing. The openly sexist, racist and self-proclaimed “proud homophobe” told journalists in the Brazilian capital that the country will not become a “gay tourism paradise”.
“If you want to come here and have sex with a woman, go for your life,” Jair Bolsonaro said.
“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.”
Brazil, of course, is already known as a gay tourism hot spot. The country boasts a number of gay-only resorts, gay beaches, and the world’s largest gay pride festival in Sao Paulo.
His comments have immediately drawn criticism from the country’s left-leaning politicians. “This is not a head of state – this is a national disgrace,” said David Marinda, a congressman and LGBT+ activist.
“He is staining the image of our country in every imaginable way.”
“This is not a head of state – this is a national disgrace."
“It is a disastrous declaration,” added Renan Quinalha, a São Paulo-based lawyer and LGBT activist,“both from the human rights point of view and with regards to Brazil’s international image.”
“[He has] give a green light to already alarming levels of violence against the LGBT community.
“All this demonstrates is … something that he has made consistently clear over nearly 30 years of public life: that he is a homophobe.”
It’s unclear what kind of impact Bolsonaro’s words will have on Brazil’s tourism industry and how upcoming Pride festivals will be affected. Should we as gay people boycott countries with unfriendly governments or go anyway and support local gay businesses?
Over in Spain, a snap election gave a surprising victory to the country’s far-right anti-gay party Vox. Vox won just over 10 percent of the vote, marking the first time a far-right party will sit in parliament since the vicious dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975.
The party split away from the centre-right PP in January 2014. They are anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim, resistant to the EU, are against LGBT+ rights, and against abortion and women’s rights.
As part of their campaigning they included pictures of the rainbow flag (amongst symbols of feminism, equality, and black power) as their “enemies” that they would go into battle against.
“We don’t consider a relationship between two men or two women to be a marriage, but it’s a civil union that needs regulating.”
Vox party leader Santiago Abascalhas said they are against “supremacist feminism and gender totalitarianism.”
He opposes same-sex marriage: “We don’t consider a relationship between two men or two women to be a marriage, but it’s a civil union that needs regulating.”
He is also vehemently against gay and lesbian couples adopting children.
“If my son told me he was gay, I would try to help him. There are therapies to treat this psychology,” Abascal told a Spanish TV reporter.
On the other side of the world, in Brunei, the small Asian country has been forced to defend its decision to introduce Sharia law. The intense international backlash and calls for boycotts of businesses owned by the Sultan of Brunei has surprised the country.
In a letter to the EU the country has asked for “tolerance, respect and understanding” as they preserve their traditional values and “family linage”.
This preservation of traditional values also includes the punishment of amputation for thieves, whipping of people who dress inappropriate to their gender, and the death penalty for those accused of adultery.
In their letter they maintain that the international outrage at their new laws is simply a misunderstanding. That the death penalty can only be enacted if there are multiple witnesses who claim to have seen the acts.
“The criminalisation of adultery and sodomy is to safeguard the sanctity of family lineage and marriage to individual Muslims, particularly women,” they write.
“The penal sentences of hadd – stoning to death and amputation – imposed for offences of theft, robbery, adultery and sodomy, have extremely high evidentiary threshold, requiring no less than two or four men of high moral standing and piety as witnesses, to the exclusion of every form of circumstantial evidence.”
Regardless, MEPs voted to back a resolution condemning “the entry into force of the retrograde sharia penal code”.
They also called on EU members to freeze Brunei assets, ban visas and blacklist the nine hotels owned by the Brunei Investment Agency – which includes the Dorchester in London and Beverly Hills hotel in LA.
Wherever we are in the world it is important to always maintain an understanding of the current state of LGBT+ rights across the globe. Only by remaining vigil, keeping the conversation going and supporting activists and awareness can we hope to continue progress. While taken together these events may seem grim, in every one of those countries there are LGBT+ activists and groups doing what they can to fight back.
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