Open letter in solidarity with trans woman Viviany Beleboni

Allow me to introduce myself briefly. I am an Anglo-Catholic bishop. I have come a long way, championing the cause of fighting for social justice since my youth.

Thanks to the struggle, I've never had a break in my life. I've also always been a victim of enormous prejudice and discrimination. But I faced it all with my head held high and learned not to be deluded by humanity, but without losing hope in people, especially the common people, constantly crushed by enormous exclusions.

During the military dictatorship, I was arrested and sentenced to two and a half years in prison under the ill-fated "national security law," an excrescence designed to provide security for the plundering of our country. A military court served as the stage for the most barbaric things I've ever heard about a human being, reported by a lying, cowardly, and servile press, as always.

I was discriminated against by churches and their leadership for not being conservative or neoliberal. They lied about me and even persecuted me, saying things I never was and never did.

In reality, what many so-called Christian groups cannot tolerate is a priest or bishop not being complicit in the barbaric civilizational capitalism, a regime that inherited all the prejudices and refinements of exploitation from the odious system of slavery.

A bishop who recognizes himself as a member of the dominated class and fights alongside it is a painful experience for the contaminated souls of many ecclesiastical "authorities" and confessional institutions. A bishop who acknowledges class struggle and refuses to flatter the oppressors, who preach daily the false peace that deceives the people, is a scandal for many churches today.

During the dictatorship, the media attacked me almost weekly with fabricated "facts" designed to undermine me socially and politically. I was the target of much hatred. And I still am.

This is me, in short, dear sister Viviany.

Furthermore, I do not agree that cultural and religious symbols should be corrupted, used for purposes other than their intended purpose, or destroyed, as this kills the soul of a people.

For these two reasons I stand in solidarity with you. I know what it's like to be discriminated against. No one needs to teach me that lesson. Furthermore, because you did not disrespect Christ or the cross, as Marcos Feliciano and others dishonestly want to make people believe.

This gentleman, who is a congressman and pastor, as well as his colleague, Delegate João Campos here in Goiânia, are notorious liars and enemies of the people.

They are members of the backward and perverse evangelical caucus. It is in their name that João Campos claims he will sue you for improper use of religious symbols. They place themselves in the worst political spectrum in the country at this moment.

Marcos Feliciano headed the Human Rights Commission of the Chamber of Deputies, and what he did most was disrespect rights and citizenship.

João Campos is known for being right-wing and reactionary. He is on a sinister list distributed by labor unions as one of those who voted in favor of outsourcing and against workers' rights.

This congressman is from the state of Goiás and a member of the most sordid right-wing party currently, the PSDB, which is currently advocating coups against the government and against democracy. His line of action is based on hatred and prejudice, rooted in an eloquent history of corruption and handing over public assets to private mafias.

What I want to tell you is that the persecution you and the entire LGBT movement suffer comes from a group of reactionaries and enemies of the Brazilian people, who imagine themselves strengthened since their defeat in the 2014 elections.

People like Feliciano and Campos lie and falsify outrageously.

For example, the cross. They know that this symbol is not originally Christian.

The cross was an instrument of weakening, torture, and death for the seditious Palestinian Jews who rebelled against Roman oppression in Palestine. Therefore, those chosen to be eliminated by crosses were the people's greatest heroes. So much so that Jesus was not crucified alone, but with two other subversives. They were not outcasts, as certain bad traditions of the Gospels and ignorant preachers would have us believe. They were revolutionaries.

It was only later that the cross was adopted as a Christian symbol, as a kind of game-changer. But its cruel aspect of exterminating people for political reasons continues to exist. On one side, among the condemned, suffer those who are discriminated against for their ideas and the causes they defend. On the other, those who condemn and exterminate, in an authoritarian and unjust way, exist because they persecute, beat, and kill.

Therefore, the spiritualization of the cross, relating it solely and reductively to spiritual problems, is a falsification of its original political meaning.

That's why I stand in solidarity with you, my sister Viviany. You correctly understood the meaning of your cross and that of your friends, wounded and killed by the prejudice and hatred of people like those so-called preachers, because they are victims of disrespect for human rights.

Your cause is marked by the cross you bear, which is neither light nor fortuitous.

Another lie spread by these wealthy preachers is their concept of family, which is exclusively heterosexual.

They lie when they teach that family comes first. Their interpretations of the Bible are wrong, and they distort everything.

In both the Old and New Testaments, the people come first. They give rise to the family, not the other way around. The first book of the Bible is Exodus, not Genesis, as it appears in the canon.

This means that first the people fought for liberation from the indignity of slavery and only then thought about family.

These preachers lie when they say that Adam and Eve represent a binary relationship and that God created the couple first and then humanity. That's a lie.

Adam means man made from the earth beneath our feet, and woman also means Eve, signifying femininity. Therefore, according to Semitic tradition, we are all Adam and we are all Eve.

Liars preach that Adam and Eve are a commandment stating that love can only exist between a man and a woman. And they turn the Adam and Eve metaphor into dogma, which is a pure distortion of the truth, showing contempt and disrespect for all studies that reveal otherwise, without prejudice to the Bible.

Their principle is intentionally conservative and aims to turn the anti-gay cause into a reactionary propaganda banner that brings them a lot of money.

In the New Testament, Christ is referred to by Saint Paul as the new humanity, the new Adam. Therefore, once again, the couple is not the primary model in relation to the people, to humanity. Christ in the New Testament is a collective that opens itself to all.

With lies stemming from a selfish and isolated concept of family, these fanatics want to undermine your struggle. That's why I stand in solidarity with you and the LGBT community. They want isolated ghettos, not a people united in the fight for social rights and for a society that includes all those who are currently different. They tremble with fear that you will be reinforcements for the revolution to come.

Another lie they tell is about the sin of sex, imprisoned by the reproductive function. Their couples have few children. So they don't have sex for pleasure? Is sex a necessary evil for them? Or do they abstain from sexual relations to avoid sinning?

The fact is, Viviany Beleboni, that the same fundamentalists who make this fuss against the use of the cross, a so-called religious symbol, are the same ones who get rich selling illusions, lies, miracles, and promises of prosperity.

Prejudiced religious people, who overstep the boundaries of their churches to project their hatred onto society and the choices of their members, are the same ones who trample on workers' rights in parliament by voting for outsourcing, also in favor of lowering the age of criminal responsibility to fill prisons with young black and poor people, and who propose making voting optional for citizens and support the worst policies against society, all riddled with authoritarian and pharisaical conservatism.

These people, when in public office, fill those positions with employees from their churches, as if to undermine the secular state. For them, the state must serve the paranoia of their worldview, preferably without the people, whom they consider sinners and children of the devil.

Finally, these TV and radio preachers take these neurolinguistic courses to learn how to emotionally deceive people, they undergo public speaking training like coaches, and even Reiki training, perverting its original functions to use the energy of their hands for quackery, impressing the public, and some, amazingly, even train in magic techniques to impress the unsuspecting.

In this turbulent moment of defiance against power by the adventurous right wing, these groups and preachers are marked by a right-wing ideology that crushes people's rebellious conscience, making them docile and obedient to their commands, which are neither religious nor Christian.

So, dear sister Viviany Beleboni, I know that not everyone behaved well enough to win society over to the cause of human rights defended by LGBT people. But that wasn't everyone's behavior. It wasn't your behavior either.

Therefore, I stand in solidarity with the LGBT community and with you because I believe that homophobia is an attack on human rights, including sexual orientation. Your intention to show that lesbians, gays, transsexuals, and transvestites are crucified and killed was fully demonstrated. Although the Pharisees saw this denunciation, their hysteria preferred the denunciatory uproar, typical of the noisy and reckless right wing without proposals.