Brazilian Elections: Marina Silva Opposes Gay Marriage

Presidential  candidate Marina Silva (Brazilian Socialist Party), an evangelical who belongs to the conservative Assembly of God, retracted her support for gay marriage one day after she presented her government plan on Friday.

The chapter Citizenship and Identities of the program included “support for proposals defending ... civil marriage.” On Saturday, Silva's campaign team released a statement correcting the text.

The new version defends “the rights of a civil union between people of the same sex”, deleting the word “marriage”, which would include more rights for couples.

“The text published was not the text previously negotiated ... there had been a mistake,” explained Silva to journalists during a visit to the favela Rocinha in Rio de Janeiro.

Silva had expressed her rejection of gay marriage in the past, while Eduardo Campos, the candidate that Silva replaced after his tragic death in an airplane crash, was in favor of gay marriage.

Moreover, the new version of her government plan substituted the objective of “eliminating obstacles to child adoption for homo-affective couples", with demanding “equal treatment to couples who adopt.”

In Brazil, homosexual couples can be registered on civil records after a 2013 judicial decision, but marriage has still not been on the legislative agenda so far. 

The current President Dilma Rousseff (Workers' Party, center-left) commented on Silva's government plan, saying her proposals were “adventurous, obscurantist, and backward,” and that they were “part of an offer that seems modern, yet deeply demagogic, and, above all, serving unknown interests.”

She specifically targeted Silva's intention to reduce the production of oil in areas called “pre-salt,” located under the maritime bed, replacing it with energy from ethanol, saying ethanol could not represent a “real alternative to fuel,” in light of current domestic needs.