Homosexuals and Civil Unions in Brazil

Monday was a rather busy day in the area of improving the rights of homosexuals in Brazil. First, the Rio de Janeiro government under Sérgio Cabral moved to have the health care and socail programs offered to public functionaries' spouses apply to homosexual unions as well as heterosexual unions. Cabral argues that discrimination against marriages based on sexuality violates the basic constitutional freedoms guaranteed in Brazil's 1988 Constitution. The request went to Brazil's Supreme Court, asking that the court validate the state government's decision to offer such services to all spouses, heterosexual and homosexual, for public functionaries.

The same day, the federal government also made it clear that it is opposed to discrimination against homosexual unions. Lula's special Minister of Human Rights, Paulo Vanucchi, declared that the government openly supports a law that allows civil unions for homosexuals in Brazil. Like Cabral, Vanucchi relied on the 1988 Constition's provisions against any and all forms of discrimination to suggest that that also applied to civil unions. Additionally, Vanucchi declared that such a law should not only allow such unions, but that it should make homosexual unions have the same rights as heterosexual unions in terms of social programs (health care, retirement, etc.) and inheritance. I don't really know what the inheritance laws in Brazil are (not exactly my area of expertise), but given these comments, I suspect they don't apply to lifelong homosexual partners.

I don't know how these two cases will play out. The case of Rio's request strikes me as closer to completion, simply because it's a state-level issue, and not a federal one, and thus does not have to go through all of the steps a federal law allowing civil unions for gays would. Additionally, the courts have proven themselves open to gay rights in the past, particularly in the case of Cássia Eller, a Brazilian singer who died a few years ago. Eller had had a child from a previous (heterosexual) marriage, but she had divorced and had settled down with her lesbian partner and her son. Her husband had already died, when she died suddenly from heart troubles. Legally, Eller's son should have gone to the grandparents of the father, but Eller's parents and her partner entered a (civil, non-contentious) court case in which the courts ruled that Eller's partner could continue raising Eller's son,a major case that showed the Brazilian courts' willingness to ignore sexuality as a determining factor and move beyond archaic laws that would have sent the child to distant relatives, in turn establishing the precedent of gay partners' rights to assume parental responsibilities of the children of their dead partners. So while I'm not sure the Supreme Court will rule in Cabral's favor, the opening of gay rights in the courts is not without precedent.

In terms of the federal government's declarations, I think it's good that Vanucchi is bringing this up, but it's still a long way from gaining popular support in Brazil. While homosexuals here have more opportunities for claiming space in the public sphere in major urban centers (Rio, São Paulo, Belo Horizonte), I'm not so sure how this would play out in smaller areas (although I know of openly gay couples in rural areas of Minas Gerais). Unquestionably the Catholic hierarchy would rally against this cause, and many people, politicians and laypersons alike, would at least be resistant to it on religious or social grounds. Still, I haven't seen any major resistance to Vanucchi's declarations from politicians or from the media; indeed, the story has hardly made a splash, it seems. And it is certainly excellent that the government is so open in its rhetoric addressing the issue. Civil unions will still take awhile, and this is just one baby step in the process, yet in terms of equality for all regardless of sexuality, Brazil is still years ahead of the U.S. on this front.