Advocacy for LGBTQIA Rights in Brazil

Listen, I am certain that if Jesus Christ were to

return today, it wouldn't be with your excellencies

that he would sit.

It would be with us, the oppressed, the humiliated, the

cursed, the stoned, those who are kicked out of their homes

simply for being who they are. Those women and men whose only

options are prostitution, marginalization, and violence

because of speeches like these that are used in the name of God.

God must be ashamed of so much evil,

cruelty, and hatred being uttered in his name.

But we are here. We are here to warn that there is no war

between Christians and LGBTQIA people.

There is no attempt to fight the church.

There is no persecution of the gospel.

There is no hatred toward anyone. What we are trying to do here with

great sacrifice and difficulty is to defend the very

few rights we have in a society that tramples on us

every single day constantly. It's to remember that we

exist, that our lives matter, and that our rights are

non-negotiable. They will not defeat us through

exhaustion.

They will not intimidate us. We will not retreat even a single

step from the struggle. They said, "Respect I don't know what.

Respect I don't know what else." And I say, respect the

historical struggle of the LGBTQIA movement.

Respect our steps. Respect our trajectories that

brought us here. And whether your excellencies like it

or not,

you'll have to swallow us because we have arrived here to represent the

voice and the longing of millions of Brazilians who,

throughout all this time, were forgotten, abandoned, and

erased from this parliament.

Listen, I am certain