I ask you, don’t these people have better things to do with their time?
It’s not as if the city doesn’t have more pressing issues to deal with. As I note in my Christian Science Monitor piece:
The biggest metropolis in the southern hemisphere with more than 20 million people, São Paulo suffers from chronic air and noise pollution, has some of the world’s most notorious traffic jams, and is “home” to thousands of street people who roam the often freezing city center.
It has inadequate rail, metro, and road links; faces devastating floods each year due to the lack of investment in infrastructure; and is in danger of missing out on the 2014 World Cupbecause its preparations are so far behind schedule.
Oh, and 260 gays, transvestites and lesbians were killed last year in Brazil, 23 of them in São Paulo. That’s more than twice the number killed in 2007.
No one has yet been killed for being straight.
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August 4, 2011 at 5:44 pm
Marcelo
It all depends on how you frame the issue of being killed for being straight. Cordel lore and sertanejo songbook are full of tales of men being killed for messing around with someone else’s woman. (Of course that may count mostly as being killed for having other predicates than straightness.)
The São Paulo city legislative could vote the “face shame” day, or whatever that relevant quality of vergonha na cara is called in English. But I doubt there will be someone there giving it any thought.
August 4, 2011 at 5:58 pm
andrewdownie
Marcelo, thanks for the comment.
I don’t think jealousy has a sexual orientation. People killed in crimes or passion can be gay or straight. They are killed for fooling around.
What do you think of the Dia de Orgulho Heterosexual vote?
August 5, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Marcelo
I agree with you about the vote, for sure. It’s a waste of legislative time (in which our excellent representatives are experts on).
September 7, 2011 at 4:03 am
inkarna
But don’t they know that EVERY day is heterosexual pride day?
It’s a funny old world…
September 7, 2011 at 9:57 am
andrewdownie
Ha ha ha, exactly!
You remind me of what my dad used to say when I asked him on Fathers day or Mothers day, when Childrens day would be. (Unlike Brazil, Dia das Criancas doesn’t exist in Scotland.) He answered, ‘Son, every day is Childrens day.’ How right he was…