"Brazil can’t be a country of the gay world, of gay tourism. We have families."

Brazil’s Anti-LGBTQ Pres. Says Come Have Sex With Women, Stay Away If You’re Gay

Brazil’s far-right, anti-LGBTQ president, Jair Bolsonaro, who once said he’d rather have a dead son than a gay one, is discouraging gay tourists from coming to the country.

“If you want to come here and have sex with a woman, go for your life,” Bolsonaro told journalists, as reported by Brazilian magazine Exame, according to The Guardian. “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.”

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“This is not a head of state—this is a national disgrace,” said David Miranda, a gay lawmaker who replaced another gay congressman, Jean Wyllys, who fled the country amid death threats.

Miranda said Bolsonaro’s comments equated to “putting a target” on the backs of LGBTQ Brazilians, while at the same time promoting the sexual exploitation of Brazilian women.

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

“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.”

Wyllys released a video statement, saying the president’s statements incited hatred against minorities, and that “Bolsonaro is simply being Bolsonaro.” The president once proclaimed himself proudly homophobic.

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

Bolsonaro’s attacks on the LGBTQ community and other minority groups extends past rhetoric as well, using his first day in office he signed executive orders limiting the rights of LGBTQ people, indigenous people, and the descendants of slaves.

Last month, he shared a video on Twitter of a man urinating on another man during a Carnival celebration.

“I don’t feel comfortable showing this, but I need to expose the truth to the population so they can have knowledge and keep their priorities in mind. This is what many ’blocos’ (street carnivals) have become,” he wrote.

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Also last month, Trump hosted Bolsonaro at the White House, where he told reporters the two are closely aligned on their “efforts to ensure liberties in respect to traditional family lifestyles, respect to God our creator, against the gender ideology or the politically correct attitudes and against fake news.”

Bolosonaro will be honored at the Brazilian Chamber of Commerce’s 2019 Person of the Year Awards Gala Dinner at the New York Marriott Marquis hotel, in New York City, on May 14, the New York Daily News reports.

The event was initially scheduled to take place at the Hall of Ocean Life at The American Museum of Natural History, but after some scientists with the museum threatened to quit, and activists said they’d disrupt the dinner, it was relocated.