From "English-Language Media Wildly Overestimated Brazil Gay Pride Numbers, Underestimated Pro-Family March" by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman, posted 6/15/07 at Lifesite.org
Some three million Christians marched through the streets of the Brazilian metropolis of Sao Paulo last week, only three days before the annual “Gay Parade”, chanting slogans against homosexuality and affirming their religious beliefs. The “March for Jesus”, held June 7th, was organized by a major evangelical protestant ministry in Brazil and included over thirty live bands playing religious music, many placed on top of flatbed trucks that rolled through the main avenues of the city.
One minister led the crowd, paraphrasing a traditional Latin exorcism prayer with “Vade retro, Satan!”, adding “Vade retro, homosexuality!” (Get back, Satan! Get back homosexuality!). Although the Associated Press, Reuters, and other English-speaking news services claimed that only a million people attended the march, the mainstream Brazilian press widely reported that three million attended, citing the Policia Militar (Military Police).
When questioned by the media, marchers denied hostility towards homosexuals, and expressed concern for their well-being. "Through the Bible, we know that God doesn't agree with what they do," members of one church group from the Vila Carrão neighborhood of Sao Paulo told the Brazilian news service G1. "We condemn their actions, and never the people. What we want is for them to know God."
...Three days later, the nation's annual "Gay Parade" presented a stark contrast to the March for Jesus. Over one million homosexual men and women marched down the city's main thoroughfare, many without shirts and dressed in drag outfits or wearing feathers.
They carried huge banners with the rainbow symbol that has been adopted by the international homosexual movement, and demanded an end to "machismo, racism, and homophobia". Last year's march resulted in the creation of a bill, currently pending in the Brazilian Congress, to outlaw all condemnations of homosexual behavior as "homophobia". The Gay Parade organizers this year demanded that such measures be accelerated.
Unlike the March for Jesus, the Gay Parade was frequently marred by violence between participants, according to Brazilian homosexual news outlets.Read the rest of the article.
