Brazil’s Marina Silva Reverses on LGBT Rights Overnight

Marina Silva’s odds of winning Brazil’s presidential election in October are looking better and better. As the AP notes, Friday brought some bad news for President Dilma Rousseff’s re-election campaign in the form of a one-two punch: not only is the economy now officially in a recession, but polls show support for Silva is continuing to rise.

According to the latest Datafolha survey, support for Silva increased by 13 points in two weeks, with the poll showing both her and Rousseff tied in the first round with 34 percent of the vote. In a second-round matchup, however, Datafolha found that Silva would beat the president by ten points, 50 to 40 percent.

Also on Friday, Silva released her official electoral platform, outlining her position on a range of issues in a 244-page document. The program contains a number of interesting proposals, like putting an end to re-election and gradually increasing healthcare spending to 10 percent of GDP. On economic issues, Silva promised to lower the country’s tax burden and give more autonomy to Brazil’s central bank, which has earned her support among the business community.

Silva's platform also included support for hydroelectric power as well as same-sex marriage, two issues she has opposed in the past due, respectively, to her environmentalism and devoted evangelical Christian beliefs.  As The Economist points out, her decision to back away from her unyielding Green image and the inclusion of these points clashes with her opponents’ -- Rousseff and the PSDB’s Aecio Neves -- efforts to paint her as an inflexible leader with radical beliefs.

A day after unveiling her platform, however, cracks began to develop in her re-branded image as a moderate on social issues, at least when it comes to LGBT rights.  

In her initial program, the chapter on LGBT rights began with an impressive recognition that Brazilian society is “sexist, heteronormative and exclusionary.” In it, Silva’s campaign expressed support for legislation to eliminate barriers to adoption for gay and lesbian couples, formalize the recognition of same-sex marriages (which Brazil’s Supreme Court legalized in a landmark decision last year), and championed “raising awareness of the diversity of sexual orientation and new family structures.” The platform also backed several bills in Congress which aim to make it easier for trans individuals to change their identification cards and to criminalize discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.  

As O Globo reported, Silva even defended these positions when questioned by journalists on Friday, saying that she was committed to the “secular state” and that “our commitment is that the civil rights of all people must be respected.”

But her platform came under heavy fire from conservative groups, in particular from popular Pentecostal televangelist and culture warrior Silas Malafaia, who accused Silva of supporting “the gay activist agenda.” 

Just 24 hours after presenting the platform, the Silva campaign walked it back, issuing a revised edition. As Folha de S.Paulo reports, the new version eliminates the language on heteronormativity and sexism, replaces explicit endorsement of gay marriage with support for civil unions, backs off of advocating legislation recognizing individuals’ gender identities, and does not propose removing barriers to adoption by same-sex couples.

According to Globo, a spokesperson for Silva's campaign claimed that the initial platform contained a number of mistakes due to a “procedural error,” and that it did not “faithfully portray the results of discussion on the topic during the planning stages of formulating the [campaign’s] government plan.”

Nevertheless, the sudden revision seems very much like standard politicking in order to appeal to evangelical voters, a move which clashes harshly with Silva’s promise to usher in an era of “new politics” in the country.

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