President Dilma Rousseff: resilient in silence and omission about LGBT rights

President Dilma Rousseff: resilient

in silence and omission about LGBT rights

Dilma has offered no support

to LGBT people in practice.

One of the most faithful affiliations to the Workers' Party is definitely Ms Dilma Rousseff, elected president of Brazil two years ago. Believe it or not, PT - Workers' Party to which Dilma is affiliated - used to be demonized by Catholics and Evangelicals before President Lula's election (her predecessor). One of the principal reasons is that PT used to be seen as a radical left-wing party, with comunist ideas. Actually, PT is known to have borne flags such as those of women's rights, LGBT rights, the agrarian reform, workers' rights, Indians' rights and other causes that nagged most of the denominations as well as the Catholic church itself.  What nobody could have ever imagined is that after 8 years (two mandates) with President Lula followed by two more years with President Dilma (there are still two more years to go) - 10 years in all until now, the agrarian reform has not taken place, LGBT rights haven't advanced in the Congress, murders and assaults against LGBT people have been on the rise as never before, retired people have faced one of the worst economical moments in the history of this country, women have faced most of the same historical disadvantages they have always struggled with, Indians have been treated as less than human, having been disrespected in every imaginable way, and the list goes on.

For all, President Dilma remains silent, especially about LGBT rights and the plummeting numbers of violence against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transexuals and transvestites which makes headlines more often than any enlightened country would ever condescend with.

The thing is, Dilma made a pact with the evangelical belt (literally called evangelical board in Brazil). Those totalitarians disguised in religious garments have taken over the Congress, regardless of not being the majority. Dilma surrendered to them in order to make sure she would win last elections. She did but at the cost of betraying many of those who have historically supported her and her party (PT), standing by her when homophobic chauvinist evangelical pastors would assume to the pulpit to satanize her candidacy every service.

While President Barack Obama openly supports equal marriage in the USA, Dilma has banned an anti-homophobia kit designed by experts in education to be used with six million students in public schools. More recetly, she has banned an HIV campaign that focused on LGBT youth among other segments. Both projects previously approve by her own ministers of education and of health, respectively. Besides, she refuses to move one finger to approve an anti-homophobia law paralyzed in the Congress, which is widely known as PLC 122 (a law bill that would criminalize homophobia on terms similar to racism). Against Ms Rousseff remains the fact that she has the majority in the Congress. Apparently contradicting her omiss approach to sexual diversity issues, she launched, in 2012, the II National LGBT Conference, which has done little or nothing for the LGBT cause, after all.

Written by Sergio Viula with information issued by Valdimário Beltrão, an activist for the Workers' Party (PT).