Badpuppy Gay Today |
Friday, 18 April 1997 |
It's OK to be a drag queen in Brazil but not a masculine gay man, the Chicago Tribune reported April 4.
"Brazil is a very tolerant country but also a very hypocritical one," said Veriano Terto, Jr., project coordinator for the Brazilian Interdisciplinary AIDS Association. "Homosexuality here is something exotic, and it's tolerated if it remains that. It's when an average-looking guy who pays taxes falls in love with another average guy that there's a problem."
"It's a paradox," said Paulo Fernandes, president of the Rio de Janeiro gay group, ATOBA. "The same people who clap during Carnival for the (flamboyant) gays on the floats throw rocks the rest of the year."
Homophobic bisexuals are a big part of the problem, ATOBA said. The group estimates that over half of Brazilian men have had sex with other men.
"Married bisexuals don't see themselves as gay," said ATOBA Vice President Raimundo Pereira. "They'll harass gay guys, even guys they've had sex with, just so they aren't identified. A lot of the killers are people who have slept with the victims."
Brazil is believed to have one of the highest anti-gay murder rates in the world. A minimum of 126 gays, lesbians and transvestites were murdered in 1996 because of their sexuality, according to data collected by Grupo Gay da Bahia--a 12 percent increase over 1995.
At the same time, Brazil is the most pro-gay country in Latin America politically. Seventy-four cities ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and a wide-ranging gay-partnership measure recently passed a Congressional committee and moved to the full Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
The bill grants gay couples spousal rights in the areas of property inheritance, pensions, welfare, health benefits, loans, taxation, and immigration. Adoption rights are withheld.
"We fear homosexuality will be hidden from publicity at the Harare summit, and open discussion will be impossible," said a spokesman. "Because of this we will not attend this conference."
Mugabe has called homosexuals "repugnant to my human conscience...immoral and repulsive." He has declared gay sex "an abomination" and "sub-animal behavior" and urged citizens to "hand (gays) over to the police."
"I don't believe they have any rights at all," he said in 1995.
Officials in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, expressed horror April 7 following news reports of the nation's first gay wedding.
The ceremony, at a local restaurant, reportedly united an Australian-Vietnamese man and his Vietnamese boyfriend. More than 100 guests reportedly attended.
"It should be publicly condemned," Nguyen Thi Thuong, vice-director of the city's state-run Consulting Center for Love, Marriage and Families, told Reuters. "Public opinion does not support this."
The Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper quoted a police spokesman as saying: "If we'd known about it we would have stopped it. But we can't fine them because we don't have laws to punish them."
_________________________________________________________________________
Rex Wockner's Weekly International Reports dating back to mid-1994 are searchable by keyword, city, state/province, nation and year at http://www.gaytoronto.com.wockner/
_________________________________________________________________________
|
© 1997 BEI;
All Rights Reserved. |
