Jair Bolsonaro.(EVARISTO SA/AFP/Getty)

The favourite to become Brazil’s next president is a far-right demagogue who has said he would prefer to have a dead son over a gay one.

Jair Bolsonaro of the Social Liberal Party leads the polls after former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva—commonly known as Lula—was banned from running because he is serving a 12-year jail term for corruption.

Bolsonaro, who was stabbed on Friday during a rally, has made numerous anti-gay comments, including in 2015 when he said hospital patients should be allowed to reject ‘gay blood.’

Speaking to TIME last month, he stood by his previous statement that if he saw two men kissing in the street, he would punch them.

“I do not kiss my wife on the street. Why face society? Why take that into the school? Little children of 6 or 7, watching two men kiss as the government wanted them to do. Is this democracy?” asked Bolsonaro.

He then equated homosexuality to paedophilia, making a link which is historically popular among homophobes and has experienced a resurgence over the past year, thanks to alt-right trolls.

The politician, who served as an army captain under Brazil’s brutal 21-year-long dictatorship, said: “So let’s respect the paedophile’s right to have sex with a two-year-old? Would that unite [Brazil]?”

Bolsonaro, a 63-year-old congressman who has been in Brazil’s parliament for 27 years, told Playboy in 2011 that death would be better for a child of his than homosexuality.

He said: “I would be incapable of loving a gay son. I prefer that he die in an accident.”

In 2013, during an interview with Stephen Fry, he reiterated this opinion, saying that “no father would ever take pride in having a gay son.”

“Pride? Happiness? Celebrate if his son turns out gay? No way.”

He added: “Look, you have to have some sort of moral compass bearing in your life. They want to reach our children in order to turn the children into gay adults to satisfy their sexuality in the future.

“So these are the fundamentalist homosexual groups that are trying to take over society.”

The presidential nominee added that “there is no homophobic behaviour in Brazil. Those who die, 90 percent of homosexual deaths, they die in drug-related situations, prostitution, or even killed by their own partners.

“I went into battle with the gays because the government proposed anti-homophobia classes for the junior grades, but that would actively stimulate homosexuality in children from six years old.

“This is not normal,” added Bolsonaro, who has been called Brazil’s Donald Trump.

Two years ago, in an interview with Ellen Page, he complained about what he claimed were growing numbers of gay people, saying: “Over time, due to liberal habit, drugs, with women also working, the number of homosexuals has really increased.”

He then once again implied that gay people make children gay, telling Page that “if your son starts hanging out with certain people with a certain behaviour, he’ll adopt that sort of behaviour. He’ll think it’s normal.”

Bolsonaro said that Page, who came out in 2014 with an emotional public speech, was “escaping normality.”

He continued: “You’re close to, with all due respect, the absurd theory. Even you with your partner, right? – won’t make children. If you’ll have one it will depend on something donated by us, heteros, us, men.”