Noticias

We talked with renowned activist Toni Reis, director of the NGO and Luis Fernando Pistori, secretary and member of the organization.

 
Campaign #FamiliaéAmor (http://www.familiaeamor.com.br/) began on last December 8, National Family Day in Brazil and was in response to Estatuto da Familia, a bill that seeks to delimit the definition of family considered only of a man and a woman. This is a clear discrimination against many other forms of existing family in the South American country.

 
The project also challenges the text of the Brazilian Constitution itself restricting the definition of family even more than the charter of Brazil. Exclusion, if this project succeeds, would not only be against same sex couples (clear main-goals of the project), but against those families formed by single mothers or fathers or other non-nuclear families. The Estatuto da Família is driven by the president of the Chamber of Deputies, Eduardo Cunha, and a strong sector of the legislature that meets ultraconservative religious institutions.

 
However, Brazil has declared its laws (eg. Law "Maria da Penha" 11,340 / 2006) the diverse nature of the family and its Constitution even allows a broad reading. In 2011, the Supreme Federal Tribunal (STF) had already extended the definition of family to those formed by same-sex couples.

 
The conservative responses to the draft law did not wait. In the Senate is another project called das Estatuto das Famílias, in plural, which does not specify the sex of the people within the family. And it is likewise the campaign Família é Amor (Family is Love), which its main purpose is to lighten the diversity of Brazilian families, whether they are homoparental, straight, divorced, childless, etc.

 

 

Democratizing family

The Dignidade Group, a civil organization for the defense of the human rights of LGBT people and based in Parana State, is responsible for the campaign at the country level. Its executive director, Toni Reis, along with the president, David Harrad, are the first gay couple who won the right to legally marry in Brazil. The couple adopted three children: Philip (10), Jessica (12) and Alyson (15).

 
"According to the German academic Petzold, there are 196 types of families. We are another family type. There is not a single family model, the traditional one of a man and a woman and children. There are many ways to build families and we are one of them” explains Toni Reis (51) , an internationally recognized activist for LGBT rights. "Family is love, is about ties. Families consisting of grandparents and grandchildren, a single mother-son, uncle-nephews are also families and there are many others. To define family in one only way will discriminate all other family constructions” states Reis.

 
Toni ensures that he and his husband, David Harrad, make a traditional family: "We like to wear alliances, we have all the papers in order, we have a house, we have children who go to school, go to school board, our children are scouts. We go picnic and we also go to the park. We are Christians: I am Catholic and my husband is an Anglican. We are a family."

 
As for the possibility of bullying their children, Toni tells us: “When we enroled children for the first time in school, we introduced to management, the teaching staff and teachers and said to them 'we are gay and have children and will not accept discrimination or bullying or prejudice and if any, we would sue the school'. Children, up to now, had no trouble because they are emotionally and psychologically strengthened."

 
"We teach them to tell our children, if they find themselves in any situation of discrimination: 'our parents are gay, so what?'. We always tell them to answer thus: 'and what?’, ‘a problem?’, ‘what do you want?' "

 
"Our family is the protagonist of our story: we are very visible. The visibility of our situation makes people to respect us. The prosecutors, judges, lawyers, the press, everyone knows our situation. "

 
“We are not against the family. We are not against the so-called traditional family. We are in favor of respecting all types of families. We do not want to destroy the family of others, we want to build our own” - Toni Reis

 
Toni concludes that it is important to democratize the words: "Words give much power. It is important not to privatize them. And 'family' is a strong word like 'God' or other. And instead of saying for example privatize 'God is mine', we say 'God is for everyone'. We need to democratize the concepts."

 
Change the view from society

Luis Fernando Pistori, Secretary of Health and Education of Dignidade Group says "We want to change society from Google searches. We want that when each person searches into the internet the word "family" they see different models besides the heterosexual family."

 
"We want to show multiple partners: gay and lesbian couples, single mothers, etc. A part of the government now wants to impose what is a family” says the secretary of Dignidade Group. "Our state is secular, which means that is separated from every religion," said Luis Fernando.

 
"Our Congress has a strong conservative component and it is difficult for LGBT people to deal with it. That's why we try to change society’s point of view first. If we change the society, the community, we can also change the government” explains the activist.

 
In the future, the campaign plans to spread throughout Brazil and, at some point, expand into the whole Latin America.
 
The family is not just blood. The family is love. We want to show that love is above all. A single mother with her son's family, friends are also family. All kinds of families are family. - Fernando Luis Pistori
 

Families are made up of various bonds that surpass all sexual orientation, social class and even blood. And this campaign is intended to build from reality, recognizing and respecting the existing diversity in society, formed not by a single family model, but by various types of families.
 
Photography: NINJA and Natalia Godoy for MANGO Study.