In Brazil, the LGBT Community is being massacred
July 27, 2011 by William K. Wolfrum
Despite steps taken by Brazil’s politicians to give equality to the LGBT community - Marriage equality recently became the law of the land - Brazil is still a very dangerous place for the LGBT community, which is putting everyone in danger:
A self-employed 42 year old had his ear severed in the early morning hours last Friday in São João da Boa Vista, a city in the São Paulo countryside 216 km from the capital. The victim and his 18 year old son say they were embracing after a country music show at the local agriculture fair when they were mistaken for a homosexual couple by a group of homophobes.
Father and son were waiting for their girlfriends, who had gone to the restroom. “They asked if we were gay and we said no,” said the man.
According to him, the group insisted on bothering them. “He asked us to kiss, because it is legal”.
Shortly thereafter, he claims to have been punched in the jaw and was unconscious for 15 seconds. When he regained consciousness, he was missing a piece of his right ear.
Brazil’s immense problem with hate crimes against the LGBT community is well documented:
In 2010, 260 gay men, transvestites and lesbians were murdered in Brazil. According to a report by the Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB) released on Monday, every day and a half a Brazilian LGBT is killed. In the past five years, there has been an increase of 113 percent in the number of murders of LGBTs. In the first three months of 2011 alone, there were 65 murders.
Among the victims, 54 percent were gay men, 42 percent were transvestites and four percent were lesbians. Luiz Mott, the anthropologist responsible for the survey, believes the statistics are smaller than the reality. “Those 260 documented murders are an underreported number, because there are no official hate crime statistics in Brazil. The situation for homosexuals is extremely troubling.”
The study also indicates that Brazil is the world leader in the murders of LGBTs. In the United States, 14 murders of transvestites were reported in 2010, while in Brazil there were 110 murders. Furthermore, the risk of an LGBT being killed violently in Brazil is 785 percent greater than in the United States.
Part of the reason for the extreme intolerance in Brazilian society is the effect of the Catholic Church and Christian evangelicals promoting an anti-LGBT agenda. But whatever the reason, it is time for the government to start taking drastic and important steps to stop this massacre. Murder and hatred is not an acceptable part of any society.
-WKW
Let’s put that figure of 260into perspective.. in 2006 49,145 people were murdered in Brazil. Is we assume that figure has slightly increased to say 52,000 in 2010 then that means that 1:200 of people killed were LGBT or about 0.5 of the number. However, that is still high. But, when you take into account the research from a well known Brazilian LGBT blog, it actually found that over 30% of the murders were committed by the partner of the murdered person or because they were involved in criminal activity.
I am not defending the murder rate but the numbers quoted in the press have often been contested by the LGBT community themselves.