Marcelo Crivella has been elected as mayor, a bishop of an evangelical church. He has opposed civil unions for homosexuals  and the criminalization of homophobia in the past but has more recently backtracked presenting a slightly more centred position, perhaps to win a few more votes in a pretty liberal city as opposed to any real change in his evangelical position. BTW, for those not well-versed in Brazilian culture / politics the whole evangelical movement has grown, huge, in Brazil. They are paricularly attractive to the poor,  disenfranchised. They build these behemoth churches all over the place.

I should think this should have no impact on dens of iniquity such as saunas and Crivella has huge debt problems for the city to occupy his time. Hopefully the normal laissez-faire of Rio' cariocas will prevail.  Might depend on what , if any,  direction the federal police are given...who knows.

 

yikes! just noticed you had brought up the same item in another thread, Lucky,  and there has been some discussion already, my apology for duplication. Mod, feel free to delete my thread.

 

We could merge your post to the other topic...

Personally i'd move all the Crivella related posts from there to here.

Well i don't think that the federal police will receive directions that will change the Brazilian laissez-faire. I mean Brazil wants to be one of the biggest economies of the world, and it wants to recover fast from the huge crysis it has experienced...i don't think that religious fundamentalism and that cuts in social rights will help this process, in a country where sexual tourism is an important part in the State's balance.

Moving the comments about the mayor from another thread to one dedicated to the subject is a good idea, lomg.

So here's the first I posted on it:

 

This news, from London's The Guardian, is no comfort to gay sauna lovers:

 

An evangelical bishop has been elected mayor of Rio de Janeiro, as rightwing candidates across Brazil strengthened their influence at the expense of a decimated Workers’ party.

Despite his past condemnation of Catholics and homosexuals, Marcelo Crivella of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God won control of the city in a second round of municipal elections that underscored the rise of religious conservatism and the demise of the leftwing party that has dominated national politics for more than a decade.

*

I don't know how much power a Rio mayor has, but the very election signals desire to return to more conservative roots with a rabidly anti-gay mayor.

Further, I posted this:

During campaigning the 59-year-old faced uproar over comments made in a 1999 book where he described homosexuality as evil and the Roman Catholic church as demonic. (bbc.com Oct.31, 2016)

 

And, from thebubble.com:

In a video from 2012 that has since been deleted, Crivella preached to his congregation that gay people deserved compassion. Sounds like an unobjectionable principle until he explains why: homosexuality is a result of suffering in the womb, specifically the kind of suffering that results from unsuccessful abortions. Crivella went on to compare their suffering to that of children born into poverty in favelas who, like gay children, are born into desperation after their mothers have tried to abort them.

It's not like there has been some momentous rightward shift in Rio's, or Brazil's, electoral politics, for that matter, with the map suddenly overladen with Red States. 

For better or for worse, ideology has never really taken a hold of the electorate (most of us would say better).  As for the  politicians, they perennially switch parties - on a strictly opportunistic basis.   

Fed up with record doses of incompetence and corruption, Brazilians simply threw out the incumbents.  Nationally, that meant the demise of  the left-wing PT, and in Rio  decades of the center-right PMDB - both long overdue.  Of the few Rio electors who  bothered to show up for the second round, the radical left (Freixo through his PSOL party), actually had their best showing in decades.  

Well, the fact is that the new mayor will be the one with the power....and how will he use it?