“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 not mean the absence of a right,” declared former Supreme Court Justice Carlos Ayres Britto, whose argument prevailed in the case.

However, it is not rare in Brazil to witness cases of justices of the peace refusing to celebrate same-sex unions—many of whom evoke “religious principles” as their justification. Others also claim that, since Congress never approved a dedicated legislation for same-sex marriages, they could be excused from officiating them.

When Mr. Bolsonaro won the election in 2018, helping scores of conservative politicians to win congressional seats in the process, he promised to promote “the values of the traditional Judeo-Christian family.” It was widely expected that he would stage an offensive against same-sex marriages. After all, another of his campaign trail declarations was that “minorities should bend to the majority—or they will be crushed.”

This fear led to a spike in the number of same-sex marriages officiated in the country, in a year when overall unions were down.

“We were so afraid of losing our rights in the post-election period that we rushed to make it official,” says Matheus Petroni, 24, who married his husband in October 2018—just before Mr. Bolsonaro confirmed his runoff-stage win.

According to recent data published by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), unions between women rose by 64 percent between 2017 and 2018—and 58 percent among male same-sex couples. The biggest increases, as you can see in the following chart, came in November and December 2018—right after the election. Data for 2019 is not yet available.

“My partner and I were thinking of getting married, but it was something for way down the line. Everything changed after the election. We decided to do it before [Mr.] Bolsonaro took over as president,” Raissa Pascoal, 28, told The Brazilian Report. “We had to arrange a wedding in 20 days!”

Brazil’s homophobia problem

Some progress has been made to curb LGBTphobia in Brazil. In 2019, the Supreme Court decided that homophobia and transphobia should be considered as crimes. Last year, Brazil passed radical legislation allowing trans individuals to use their chosen names on identity cards without first undergoing gender reassignment surgery. The move, which came after concentrated mobilization efforts from the trans community, has been widely praised.

But violence against Brazil’s LGBTQ population remains shockingly high. The country recorded 420 deaths related to LGBTphobia last year, according to a report by NGO Grupo Gay da Bahia.

Cultural factors come into play in Brazil, with Christian fundamentalism and social conservativism continuing to stigmatize LGBTQ populations. Traditional approaches to gender roles and norms also play a large part in constructing attitudes. In a 2016 Human Rights Commission report, head of Brazil’s National LGBTQ Association Dr. Toni Reis said that the country’s “high incidence of hate-motivated attacks [is] in large part due to the culture of ‘machismo’ which is intolerant of gender nonconformity and frequently responds to it with acts of violence.”[/restricted]