Sexual politics and sexual rights in Brazil: An overview*

Abstract

The objective of this text is to survey the political construction of sexual rights in Brazil working on themes that are especially relevant to the configuration of these rights (reproduction/abortion, STDs/AIDS and sexual diversity), and mapping the main actors, the legal instruments now in place or still being discussed and, lastly, the public policies that have been adopted in the last two decades. We considered the 1988 Brazilian Constitution the landmark from which, in terms of the civil society's perspective at least, demands for new rights are ordained and, at state level, public policies and legal instruments are generated to satisfy these demands.

Keywords:

• Sexual politics
• sexual rights
• sexual health
• Brazil

Notes

*This article is based on a longer study that was developed in collaboration with Sexuality Policy Watch, with funding provided by the Ford Foundation. For an extended discussion of the issues examined in this article, see “Sexual politics and sexual rights in Brazil: A case study”, which is available as part of the e-book, SexPolitics: Reports from the Front Lines, edited by Richard Parker, Rosalind Petchesky, and Robert Sember, 2007. This e-book includes a series of case studies, as well as a crosscutting analysis, focused on the politics of sexual health and rights in eight countries and two institutional contexts. SexPolitics can be found online at <http://www.sxpolitics.org/frontlines/home/>.

1. The promulgation of the 1988 Constitution put an end to a long authoritarian period instituted by the 1964 military coup, and its contents reflect the re-democratisation process that began in the late 1970s. On this process converged not only those left-wing political forces displaced by the military coup but a whole series of new actors organised around the issues of gender, race and sexuality during the dictatorship era.

2. Conclusions developed by the Parliamentary Inquest Commission on Maternal Mortality (1996–2001) point in this direction. About the Parliamentary Inquest Commission on Maternal Mortality, see also CEDAW (2002).

3. See the data published by Rede Nacional Feminista de Saúde, Direitos Sexuais e Direitos Reprodutivos (the Feminist National Network of Health, Sexual Rights and Reproductive Rights), especially the dossiers Aborto Inseguro (Unsafe Abortion) (n.d.) and Mortalidade Materna (Maternal Mortality) (n.d.).

4. For a detailed account of this development, see Pandjiarjian (n.d.) and Oliveira (2001).

5. Both the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, and the 1995 Beijing World Conference on Women, were decisive for putting reproductive rights on the Brazilian human rights agenda and inserting the theme of sexual rights, linked to reproductive rights or, what is more, detached from it. See Corrêa (1997), Ventura (2002), and Buglione (2002), among others.

6. For a more thorough reflection on the theme, see Parker and Aggleton (2001).

7. Nowadays, about 700 nongovernmental organisations operate in the field of AIDS assistance and prevention in Brazil, besides other international NGO networks.

8. For an enlarged picture of the role played by judiciary power, see Rede Nacional de Direitos Humanos em HIV/AIDS (1997).

9. At the same time, in 1992, the first loan agreement for “Projeto Controle da AIDS e DST” (AIDS and STDs Control Project), known as AIDS I, with the World Bank, began to be negotiated. It contributed in a decisive way to reformulate the HIV/AIDS policies in the country. The resources obtained through AIDS I were, in turn, renewed by means of two new agreements, AIDS II, for the 1998–2002 period, and AIDS III, begun in 2003. For a detailed analysis and chronology of this and other initiatives, see Parker et al. (1999) and Galvão (2000, 2002).

10. In May 2005 a news item, published in The Lancet, stated that the measure was important because “it sends out the message that grants discriminating against people because of their race, religion, sexuality, or even profession, are unhelpful and unwanted” (The Lancet 2005). In July 2005, the coordinator to the National STD/AIDS Programme declared to the New York Times that the way the USAID grants were being determined harmed the Brazilian programme “from the point of view of its scientific credibility, its ethical values and its social commitment” (Rohter 2005).

11. This criticism sprung up initially in the universities, in the counter-culture sphere and, above all, among the first groups of homosexual activists. This moment was marked by the rising of a politically engaged homosexual press, with the creation of a newspaper, O Lampião da Esquina (in 1978), by intellectuals from Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo; and by the organisation of a group, Somos (in 1979), the first nucleus of homosexual activism in the country. See Fry and MacRae (1983) and MacRae (1990).

12. The proceedings of the National Constitutional Assembly took place at a period of the Brazilian homosexual movement reorganisation. See Facchini (2005) and Câmara (2002).

13. The nowadays called ABGLT has 144 affiliated groups in Brazil (www.abglt.org.br).

14. Data collected in Brazilian Parades (Rio de Janeiro, Porto Alegre and São Paulo) indicated that, besides an important heterosexual attendance, these manifestations can count now on the participation of various groups that comprise the LGBT movement today, and even on politicians aligned with the cause, as well as segments of the thriving Brazilian pink market. See Carrara et al. (2003).

15. Arguing from the constitutional definition of family, which includes single-parent families, Roger Raupp Rios points out that “family” and “marriage” are not necessarily related. See Golin et al. (2003: 180).

16. For a more multi-layered analysis of the discussions on civil partnership in the House of Deputies, see Mello (2005).

17. According to information published in the press in 2001, when the Bill was ready to be voted on, the Brazilian Bishops National Conference sent to all 513 deputies a letter lecturing on the danger of “anti-natural” unions. This attitude, in turn, is perfectly in agreement with that of the Vatican in its document “Family, Matrimony and In Fact Unions”.

18. For the comments of the Republic Attorney in charge of the Action on sexuality's free expression, and the many stages in the process, see Golin et al. (2003).

19. About the way the Brazilian judiciary treated homosexuality in murder cases in former periods, see Carrara and Vianna (2004).

20. For recent works dealing with the theme in Brazil, see Bento (2004) and Zambrano (2003).