GLAAD was inspired this week by the way Brazilian activists stood up to anti-gay censorship. When Rio’s conservative evangelical mayor Marcelo Crivella tried to censor an Avengers comic that included a kiss between two men from a book fair, activists said ‘no way.’

Writer, actor and LGBTQ ally Felipe Neto who has 34 million YouTube subscribers bought 14,000 copies of the comic and gave them away. Rio biennial book fair organizers also fought the censorship attempts and Folha de S.Paulo, one of the country’s leading papers, featured the kiss on its front page.

Crivella once called homosexuality a “terrible evil” in his 1999 book “Evangelizing Africa,” according to a CNN story. Anti-gay forces have been emboldened in the past several years by the election of far right president Jair Bolsonaro. GLAAD was honored to help ensure Bolsonaro was not honored at a New York fundraiser earlier this year and we will continue to support Brazilian activists in their country and abroad.

The move comes after government agencies froze or slashed millions of dollars in funding for television and films to deny support to projects with LGBTQ themes.The government’s secretary of culture resigned over one of the decisions.

“Brazilian advocates show such creativity and fearlessness in speaking out against censorship, homophobia and transphobia, and we are with them always in the fight for equality for everyone in the beautiful country that is Brazil,” said Monica Trasandes, director of Spanish-Langauge & Latinx Media & Inclusion at GLAAD.

The kiss is between heroes and boyfriends Wiccan (Billy Kaplan) and Hulkling (Teddy Altman), who were introduced in the Young Avengers series in 2005. While that series has wrapped, Wiccan will return September 25 as a member of the new team Strikeforce in Marvel’s Strikeforce #1.

Read more about it in the Advocate