Gay Rights in the Age of Democratic Backsliding: Bolsonaro’s Brazil with Reflections on the United States

Abstract Democratic backsliding is widely recognized as a threat to gay rights, but it is far from clear why the impact of this political malaise varies from country to country. This article makes the case for two variables as the key factors shaping the fate of gay rights in backsliding democracies: democratic resilience and the grounding of gay rights. It shows how under the illiberal and homophobic administration of Jair Bolsonaro (2019–2022), gay rights in Brazil not only survived but also thrived. The country’s biggest gay rights victory—the criminalization of homophobia and transphobia—came under Bolsonaro’s watch. The analysis shows that gay rights in Brazil (and in contrast to the United States) were protected by the capacity of political institutions to defend democracy and a robust civic response to democratic threats. Less apparent is the firm grounding of gay rights in Brazil, which this article argues is owed to the framing of gay rights as a human rights matter rather than as a legal issue.