Brazil’s far-right president, the self-declared homophobe Jair Bolsonaro, has been accused of inciting hatred towards LGBT people after declaring the South American country should not become a “gay tourism paradise”.

“If you want to come here and have sex with a woman, go for your life,” Bolsonaro reportedly told journalists in the capital, Brasília. “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,” Bolsonaro added, according to the Brazilian magazine Exame.

The comments – made during a breakfast meeting with Brazilian reporters – sparked an immediate reaction from LGBT campaigners.

“This is not a head of state – this is a national disgrace,” said David Miranda, a leftist congressman and LGBT activist. Miranda said the president’s remarks simultaneously endangered members of Brazil’s LGBT community by “putting a target on their backs” and promoted the sexual exploitation of Brazilian women.

“He is staining the image of our country in every imaginable way,” Miranda said.

Renan Quinalha, a São Paulo-based lawyer and LGBT activist, said: “It is a disastrous declaration, both from the human rights point of view and with regards to Brazil’s international image.”

He added that the comments “give a green light to already alarming levels of violence against the LGBT community” by suggesting that only heterosexual families were genuine families. “All this demonstrates is … something that he has made consistently clear over nearly 30 years of public life: that he is a homophobe,” Quinalha said.

In a video posted on Twitter, Jean Wyllys, another prominent LGBT campaigner, said the comments incited hatred against minorities.

“With this unhappy declaration and this unhappy gesture against the LGBT community, Bolsonaro is simply being Bolsonaro,” added Wyllys, who fled into exile in January after receiving death threats.

Bolsonaro’s election last October stunned members of Brazil’s LGBT community, who fear his election has legitimised a new wave of homophobia and homophobic violence.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has long been notorious for his homophobic comments, once declaring: “Yes, I’m homophobic – and very proud of it.”

During a 2013 interview with the British actor Stephen Fry, Bolsonaro claimed “homosexual fundamentalists” were brainwashing heterosexual children to “become gays and lesbians to satisfy them sexually in the future”.

He told Fry “Brazilian society doesn’t like homosexuals.” The actor later described the encounter as “one of the most chilling confrontations I’ve ever had with a human being”.

Bolsonaro’s remarks are the latest blow to longstanding Brazilian attempts to build an international reputation as a tolerant and inclusive society, as well as to efforts to promote Brazil as a welcoming destination for gay tourists.

Bolsonaro’s international ostracism was highlighted earlier this month when a high-profile campaign by environmentalists forced the cancellation of a gala honouring him at New York’s natural history museum.

New York mayor Bill de Blasio backed the campaign and branded Bolsonaro “a very dangerous human being”.

Brazilian LGBT activists said they shared that assessment but would not be intimidated by Bolsonaro’s latest attack.

“We believe love will always win against hate and there is nothing that he can do to beat that,” said Julio Moreira, an activist from Rio-based advocacy group Arco-Íris. “We will never ever return to the closet.”

Miranda said: “I feel a duty to fight against this kind of speech to show that LGBT people exist in this country and that they will fight against this LGBT-phobic president. You can be certain that we will resist and we will resist in the streets.”