Members of the LGBT+ community live in fear as violence rises across Brazil. Despite hosting the largest Pride festival in the world and providing a number of legal rights to the community, including marriage equality, there is still widespread intolerance towards the LGBT+ community among the Brazilian public.
In what the media has described as “the conservative restoration,” in recent years Brazil has seen a rise in far-right conservative and evangelical movements that actively and openly oppose LGBT+ rights and acceptance. “They kill with so much hate,” Viviany Beleboni, a transgender model, told CBC News. “Unfortunately, we live in a country where religion ends up disseminating that we are demons.”
The Human Rights Campaign documented 326 murders of LGBT members in 2014. And the group Transgender Europe has described the country as deadliest place for an LGBT person, in terms of absolute numbers.