19 Mar Brazilians protest against anti-gay racist pastor turned human rights boss
Protests spread across 43 cities against Marco Feliciano, the newly elected chair of Brazil’s House of Representatives Committee on Human Rights and Minorities (CDHM).
The protests which have been held on Saturday and Sunday (16 and 17 March) as well as the previous weekend, demanded that the chair, a renowned racist and homophobic deputy and evangelical pastor, be forced to leave his post immediately.
Feliciano, who was elected on 7 March, is under investigation for inciting hate speech and embezzlement.
In 2011 he tweeted saying being gay is ‘hateful’, ‘sick’ and against the rule of God, adding that ‘salvation is available to them’ in the form of a gay ‘cure’.
As well as tweeting that ‘Africans are descendants of an ancestor cursed by Noah.
More recently he said that ‘AIDS is a gay cancer’, and called LGBT advocates a ‘gay dictatorship’.
Last year he tweeted at president Obama saying ‘as a Brazilian Congressman, and on [SIC] the name of Christian Social Party, I am deeply sad about your regarding wedding gay opinion [SIC]’.
Feliciano nevertheless maintained that his remarks were ‘biblical’ and taken out of context,
He later tweeted a video alleging a conspiracy between ‘homosexual militiants’ and lefting parties against him, particularly signaling out Toni Reis, president of ABGLT – the national Brazilian LGBT association.
Most major cities saw protests led by prominent LGBT rights advocates and anti-racism activists.
In São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city, over 500 people march and shouted ‘Fora Feliciano!’ ‘Feliciano, out!’.
Other major protests occurred in Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia (Brazil’s capital), Florianópolis, Porto Alegre, Maceió, Vitória, Fortaleza and Salvador – which was led by the veteran LGBT rights advocate, Luiz Mott, head and founder of the Bahia Gay Group.
In Curitiba, state capital of Paraná, as well as in Brasilia, protests were led by Reis, who reported today (18 March) to have received death threats for his campaign against Feliciano.
Reis told Gay Star News: ‘I won’t be dettered by threats, we have to fight the rising tide of an anti-gay evangelical movement whose power is rising Brazil’s political system’.
A petition of campaign group AVAAZ calling for Feliciano to be revoked gathered so far over 450,000 signatures.
Feliciano says he is adamant to continue to chair CDHM.
However, members of the Brazilian Congress along with human rights group announced they are launching a new parliamentary front of ‘Defence of Human Rights’, this Wednesday (20 March) to create a parallel forum to CDHM.