On the 41st anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion (June 28, 2011), I was invited to participate in a roundtable debate on the LGBT movement in Brazil—what we could learn from the past and what future challenges might be. It had, indeed, been a high-energy time for activists, who had mobilized several marches in São Paulo over a five month period, some of them reaching five thousand people. In addition to talking about the various problems facing LGBT people in São Paulo, several activists claimed that, contrary to a common sense opinion of progress, the movement was in a retrograde moment (um momento de retrocesso). Motivating several people to make this analysis was President Dilma Rousself’s declaration six weeks prior (mid-May 2011) that she was pulling a program to include an anti-homophobic education. The program “Education without Homophobia,” was the only program from a much larger agenda called “Brazil without Homophobia” to be put into action. Its veto from the president (and the politically suspect circumstances around that veto), left many LGBT activists disillusioned.
I had been hearing the politically fatalist talk in reaction to the veto of "Education without Homophobia" for quite some time. As an outside observer, I found it fascinating (and extremely relevant) that these same activists two weeks before the veto had been celebrating the unqualified success of the movement after the Supreme Court unanimously voted in favor of same-sex civil unions (May 4, 2011). As one activist told me during the spontaneous celebrations that followed the decisions, he felt that “anything was possible” and that we were embarking on a new phase of the movement. At the roundtable, I reminded people about this very short timeline between political elation and depression. I argued that the future is wildly unpredictable, and that we can hardly know whether we are in a moment of progress or retrograde. (Indeed, privately, I wondered about the validity of the terms).
How was it that peoples' collective understanding of the political present, of the historical moment in which the they were taking part, change so radically in such a short period of calendar time?
Some considerations (under the fold):
