Endless times of torment and battles
that seem to be coming to a crucial point.

How did the LGBT+ community
as it is known today form?

What is happening in this regard?

Let's try to look at how the world
approaches this theme.

Karl-Heinrich Ulrichs, the father of the LGBT+ movement who spoke openly about gay rights

He was the first to break down the halo of mystery and prejudice that covered a disheartened and misunderstood community. It was only 1867, but the world enriched with cultural and social history continued to evolve, and with it the history of the LGBT+ community.
The nineteenth-century conscience, the child of post-Enlightenment and early Romanticism, began to resent the kind of severity society was used to witness.
In the course of the century, in fact, those guilty of sodomy, caught in the act, were no longer condemned to the stake, but relegated to the provinces or interned in some hospital.
If before, same-sex sexual relations were lumped together with magic, witchcraft and heresy, now they began to be considered a disease or a less serious fault than before.

And shortly after?

For the first time, in the late 1800s, the term "bisexual" was used in a psychiatry textbook, "Psychopathia Sexualis", expanding studies on the human sexual spectrum and analysing its different nuances.
If previously they risked being condemned to the stake, now they risk, alongside moral condemnation, becoming phenomena to be studied.
The consequence was that these people first used to hide their orientation for fear of being burnt alive, then they hided so as not to become the object of scandal or medical attention.

One night, one change

From 28 June to 3 July 1969, a series of violent clashes between LGBT+ groups and the police in New York City characterised five nights, known as "The Stonewall Riot".

In unison, at the Stonewall Inn. hundreds of people shouted in honour of their rights, giving rise to the 1970 Prides in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.
For the first time, the LGBT+ community demanded equality, no longer exclusion. It demanded judgmental protections, not more violence.
For the first time, a new narrative was being created.

The historic clashes of June '69 gave birth to the dignity of a community, no longer invisible and disrespected.
They urged and still urge countries around the world to recognise the rights of all people regardless of their sexual orientation and gender identity.

No longer silent, not even in politics

The citizens of America began to demand full representation and political honesty, especially after the events of the past decade.
And so a decade later new political representatives emerged, as David McReynolds, first openly homosexual candidate in the American presidential elections.
In the United States, the first footprints of inclusion were marked towards the LGBT+ environment and the first debates on this issue, one of the most prejudiced along with racism.

On the 17 May on 1990, something historical happened: the World Health Organisation (WHO) has removed homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses.
The main factors that contributed to the social stigma attached to to homosexuality and what they considered "hate crimes and deviant acts" were reviewed and discussed.

The removal of homosexuality from the list of mental illnesses was an historic moment, so much so that it led in 2004 to choose 17 May as the date for the establishment of the International Day Against
homophobia (International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia).

Yet, 30 years after the WHO resolution, in many countries practices such as reparative therapies still exist and only recently some governments are working to ban them.

On the other hand, the situation does not seem to be the one guaranteed by the political class.

"We are a country that from the outside gives the idea of being open and welcoming, but in reality Brazil is very violent and conservative".

This is the judgement of Mônica Benício, widow of activist and Rio de Janeiro city councillor Marielle Franco, who was murdered in 2018 for her efforts to counter police abuse.

The country's violence is immediately apparent from the statistics: according to activists, between 1980 and 2006, some 2680 homosexuals were murdered for reasons of discrimination, an average of 103 murders per year.

Recently, the figures have worsened: in 2019, the Associação Nacional de Travestis e Transexuais (ANTRA) recorded 175 murders motivated by homosexuality/transphobia, with the perpetrators being convicted in only 10% of the cases.
Brazil is therefore the nation with the highest number of victims of sexual orientation discrimination in the world, and it is not uncommon for Brazilian citizens to move to Portugal as a solution.

The data indicate, therefore, a serious marginalisation of the trans community in particular, with very high drop-out rates (82%) and exclusion from the labour market (90%).

Under these conditions, many members of this group end up involved in prostitution, thus exposing themselves to involvement in street crime and drug dealing.

This explains why the life expectancy of a trans person in Brazil is set at only thirty-five years.