Possible Brazilian presidential candidate has come out as gay! #pinkinourlives

03.07.2017 – Prefeita Paula MAscarenhas na inauguração da foto do ex-prefeito Eduardo Leite – Foto: Gustavo Vara

Eduardo Leite, the governor of the southern Rio Grande do Sul state, made the announcement in an interview with the country’s top broadcaster TV Globo.

“In this Brazil of little integrity, at this time, we have to debate who we are, so that everything is clear and there is nothing to hide,” the 36-year-old said.

“I’m gay – and I’m a governor who is gay rather than a gay governor,” he declared, according the The Guardian, adding: “And I am proud of it.”

Leite chose Pride Week in Brazil to come out, addressing the gossip that’s been swirling around him since he became a potential presidential candidate for the centre-right Brazilian Social Democratic party (PSDB).

He spoke of how this has affected his relationship with his boyfriend of nine months, a doctor for whom he has “enormous admiration and love”. “Now with my participation in national politics, in this national debate, there have been ever-growing attacks by my rivals,” he said. “I go out to dinner with my boyfriend, I do not hide from anyone. But there has always been some brouhaha, some allusion, a joke from the president, attacks from other politicians. This is not right, it is not correct, it is not tolerable.”

Eduardo Leite hopes to challenge the far-right president Bolsonaro in next year’s election. The homophobic rhetoric Bolsonaro has seen a deadly rise in anti-LGBT+ rhetoric in Brazil, causing one trans politician to flee the country after being targeted with relentless death threats.

Eduardo Leite’s coming out sparked an outpouring of support from activists and fellow politicians.

Leite says that he had nothing to hide in coming out as gay, but said he wished sexual orientation was “a non-issue” in Brazil. “I never created a character, I never said I wasn’t, I never tried to make people believe I wasn’t gay.”

“You’ve made history,” the veteran LGBT+ campaigner Toni Reis wrote on Facebook.

“I know the pain the prison of the closet represents, particularly in a conservative environment like politics,” tweeted Fabiano Contarato, who became Brazil’s first openly gay senator in 2018.

Why he chose this moment to talk about the subject, Leite said: “On a national journey, at a time when the country has an attack on these individual freedoms, blame for the country’s problems is sought and putting blame on minorities, on specific groups, I think it’s important to bring up this issue.”