Brasilia, Oct 10 (EFE).- A commission of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday approved a bill promoted by the far right that proposes ending same-sex marriage, even though it has been legally recognized since 2011.
Once approved, two other commissions will debate the text, then by the plenary session of deputies, and, if supported by a majority, it will continue to the Senate.
The commission, dominated by far-right sectors aligned with former President Jair Bolsonaro (2019-2022), approved the project with twelve votes in favor and five against.
The vote was taken after an intense debate full of religious references, despite the opposition of the progressive base close to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
The initiative’s proponents rescued a project from 2007, which had been blocked, claiming it had been going through parliament before the Court recognized same-sex civil marriage.
The session was also marked by LGBT+ community groups’ protests at the deputies’ meeting room doors, denouncing the “unconstitutionality” of the proposal.
Homosexual marriage was recognized by the Supreme Court in 2011 as equal to that of a man and a woman. In 2013, the National Council of Justice decided that it should be carried out in all civil registries in the country.
According to official figures, some 80,000 same-sex marriages have been celebrated in Brazil since then, whose rights and recognition will be at stake if the project is approved by the Chamber of Deputies and then by the Senate.
Lula’s government has warned that it will veto the bill. However, that would only send it back to the legislative chambers for new discussions.
Deputy Francisco Eurico da Silva, an evangelical pastor who acted as rapporteur for the project, stated that the judiciary “usurped responsibilities and powers that belong to the Parliament.”
According to da Silva, who belongs to the Liberal Party, of which Bolsonaro is “honorary president,” “these decisions had ideological purposes and distort the will of the people expressed through their legitimately elected representatives.”
He also stated that “allowing homosexual marriage is a denial of the way human beings are born and an attack on the very existence of the human species.”
These arguments were rejected by socialist Erika Hilton, one of the two transsexual deputies in the Brazilian Congress, who denounced the “totalitarian, undemocratic and homophobic” nature of a project that violates “human rights” and “individual dignity,” enshrined in the Constitution. EFE
ed/mcd/ar
