Silvio Almeida denies participating in new rules on unisex bathrooms

Minister Silvio Almeida, responsible for the Human Rights portfolio in the Lula (PT) government, reported this Saturday morning (23) that he had contacted the Attorney General’s Office (AGU) asking for the administrative, civil and criminal liability of opposition deputies. According to the minister, Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG) and Filipe Barros (PL-PR) had disseminated false news claiming that the federal government had allowed unisex bathrooms in the country’s schools.

The case has to do with the resolution published by the government this Friday (22), directing all schools in the country to allow the use of the bathroom according to gender identity, which in practice opens a loophole for a person who If you consider yourself a woman, even though you were born a man, use the women’s bathroom. The resolution also establishes that students dress according to their gender identity and that teachers use the “social name” to refer to students of any age, including in school records.

In a publication on the same day as the measure was published, Nikolas stated that “Lula’s Minister of Human Rights instituted the unisex bathroom for all schools in Brazil, including for minors”. Barros’ publication mentioned similar terms. “It is the biggest electoral fraud committed so far by the criminal Lula,” said the parliamentarian.

In the letter, Silvio Almeida claims that neither he nor Lula had any role in drafting the new rules and says that the parliamentarians’ comments were offensive and represent crimes against honor. Although the minister claims not to have participated in the creation of the document, the resolution was edited by the so-called “CNLGBTQIA” – National Council for the Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transvestites, Transsexuals, Queers, Intersex, Asexual and others – which is part of the portfolio headed by the minister.

Opposition filed project to suspend resolution

On Friday night, opposition deputies filed a project to block the aforementioned resolution with new rules for the use of bathrooms in schools. According to Nikolas Ferreira, the Draft Legislative Decree aims to “sustain the Resolution of the Ministry of Human Rights that guarantees the use of bathrooms and changing rooms in schools in accordance with the ‘gender identity or expression’ of each student”. “I am doing it together with opposition deputies who will be co-authors. Bathroom is not an ideological issue, but an anatomical and biological one. We will not accept this imposition”, said the parliamentarian on social media.

TSE banned Bolsonaro from warning about unisex bathrooms, now imposed by the Lula government

On October 20 last year, 10 days before the second round of elections, the president of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), Alexandre de Moraes, prohibited former president Jair Bolsonaro from warning voters about the risk of implementation in schools Brazilian women, of the “unisex bathroom”, if President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the election.

Last year, in a live broadcast on October 16, Bolsonaro said: “Soon this party [PT]which wants gender ideology, wants unisex bathrooms for our children in the classroom, has no commitment to the family, wants abortion, wants to legalize drugs, this party that is now acting like a moralist, accusing me… ”.

Two days later, on October 18, the PT coalition asked the TSE to order the removal of the video, as well as a post by the Latino singer with a drawing of girls in a bathroom with boys. “When your little girl has to go to the same bathroom as boys and men, then you teach her how to do the ‘L’”, said the phrase pasted to the image.

Lula’s lawyers in the campaign pointed out “fake news” and, to this end, cited texts from checking agencies according to which the unisex bathroom was not in Lula’s government program, nor had it been proposed by him. After Bolsonaro’s live broadcast, Lula started saying that it was “absurd” to say that he would implement a unisex bathroom if elected.

“These guys have no respect. I am the father of five children, I have eight grandchildren, four of whom are girls, and I have a great-granddaughter. These guys think they can lie anyway? It’s not possible for people to have the gall to tell a lie like that inside a church,” he said on the Flow podcast, on October 18, right after Bolsonaro’s live broadcast.

The following day, October 19, during a meeting with evangelicals in São Paulo, he repeated that he has a family. “The story of a unisex bathroom could only have come out of Satan’s head,” he said, after saying that he was offended when people questioned his “respect for the family”. “I don’t consider a pastor to lie, pastor.”

On October 20th, in a preliminary injunction, Moraes repeated, in his decision, a long essay on freedom of expression, and that it did not shelter “hate speech”, “aggression”, and the “propagation of lying speeches, aggressive, hateful and prejudiced!”

Afterwards, he wrote that Bolsonaro’s statement “departs from reality, through untruths, by stating that candidate Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, as well as the Workers’ Party, would be in favor of implementing unisex bathrooms in schools, as well as the abortion and the liberalization of drugs”.

“This is the dissemination of untrue information tending to misinform the population about topics that are sensitive to the population, which require broad discussion, and on which it intends to win over the electorate opposed to such controversial matters, to the evident detriment of its opponent, including the check carried out demonstrating the falsity of the information.”

With this justification, he ordered YouTube to remove Bolsonaro’s video and Twitter to delete Latino’s post, within 24 hours, and prohibited the two from promoting new demonstrations about the unisex bathroom, under penalty of a fine of R$100,000 per day.

Bolsonaro appealed, claiming that the video was protected by freedom of expression and that “the party to which the opposing candidate is affiliated publicly supports the implementation of multi-gender public spaces, as well as abortion.” Moraes did not accept the arguments and, on January 13 of this year, fined Bolsonaro R$30,000 and Latino R$5,000.

In June this year, the case was brought to the plenary and all ministers agreed to punish Bolsonaro and Latino – Raul Araújo and Kassio Nunes Marques only differed on the amount, proposing that the former president pay only R$5,000, but they were defeated . Cármen Lúcia, Benedito Gonçalves, Floriano de Azevedo Marques and André Ramos Tavares followed Moraes.