Brazil: 38 Couples Married Collectively by Fear of Bolsonaro

Around 40 homosexual couples got married on Saturday in a collective marriage ceremony in Sao Paulo, Brazil's biggest city, because they are "afraid" of the possible consequences from the actions of a government led by far-right President-elect Jair Bolsonaro, who will be sworn in on January 1st.

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Nowadays, civil marriage between people of the same sex is legal in Brazil. However, many people are afraid that the situation will change and that several rights will be banned by the far-right former military man, Bolsonaro, who has given several discriminatory and conservative speeches against several "minorities."

The collective marriage was an initiative of Casa 1, an NGO that welcomes people from the LGBT community and helped these couples, that are mostly of low-income, to get married through a popular financing campaign that raised around $50,000 Reais (about U$D 13,000).

Lais Rissato, the coordinator of Casa 1, told EFE that "when Bolsonaro was elected, many people from the LGTB community were worried and afraid because today in Brazil, civil marriage between people of the same sex is allowed, it is legal."

But she also stressed that "when the result of the election came out, many people got worried, thinking: 'Could it be that next year we will continue to be able to get married? Are we going to have our rights guaranteed?' Because of that, we decided to organize the collective wedding." Several of these couples had their weddings planned for 2019, however, the fear of losing that right made them change their minds.

"We have already seen the weight that religion and the churches will have in the new Government," said Wellington Pereti, one of the persons who got married, before adding that "I believe that things can get much worse after the inauguration," of Jair Bolsonaro.

Jair Bolsonaro has been openly and publicly homophobic on different occasions. He recently had to state that he will govern for all Brazilians and his Vice President Hamilton Mourao said that the incoming government does not plan to change the status of same-sex marriages, thus many LGTB community members fear that the country will change drastically after the new government takes offices.