Sexual diversity, political parties and elections in contemporary Brazil

Abstract

The present article aims to analyse a phenomenon, which is increasing visible in contemporary Brazilian politics: LGBT political candidacies. The article is organised in three sections. In the first section, I explore the academic debate on the institutional political field, with a special emphasis on political parties and electoral recruitment in Post-redemocratisation Brazil. In the second section, I analyse the relationships (and the tensions) between homosexual activists and leftist political parties (specially the Worker’s Party) since the emergence of the homosexual political movement in late 1970’s until Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s administration (2003-2011). In the third section, I investigate pro-LGBT rights candidates profiles. In order to do so, I used information about openly-LGBT and allied candidates who committed to LGBT rights, according to ABGLT in the last elections (2002, 2004, 2008 e 2012). Data was collected at the TSE website and it was organised in a SPSS database.

Keywords:
sexual diversity; LGBT rights; elections; political parties; LGBT candidacies; electoral recruitment.