This week, IstoE, a Brazilian news magazines, named him one of the 100 people to watch in 2012, alongside figures such as Kim Jong-un, Barcelona FC coach Pep Guardiola, Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, and Barack Obama. In 2010 he was elected federal MP for the Socialism and Liberty party and since then his battle for human rights has earned him widespread accolades. Those expecting Wyllys to disappear after his 15 minutes of fame were mistaken. "I said I was homosexual and I still won the programme in a country that is homophobic." "This had great political relevance," he said. Then he relocated to Rio de Janeiro, applied to appear in Brazil's version of the reality show Big Brother, and won – with 50m votes. He got a degree and built a career as a journalist. "What my parents couldn't give me the church did," he said.įrom Alagoinhas he moved to the state capital, Salvador – home to Brazil's first organised gay rights movement. In his teens, Wyllys sought refuge in the left-leaning Catholic church, where priests encouraged him to read "everything, from the Bible to Mario Vargas Llosa".
Aged 10 he sold candyfloss to help his family make ends meet. One of seven children, he lost a sister to typhoid. His mother was a washerwoman who worked at the local Pojuca river and his father was an alcoholic. Jean Wyllys de Matos Santos was born in Alagoinhas, a small town in the north-eastern state of Bahia, in 1974. "For a long time they advanced silently – and now we are starting to realise the political force they have become," he said. "These churches are advancing on hearts and minds," said Wyllys, accusing neo-pentecostal preachers of "demonising" gay people and the followers of African-Brazilian religions such as Umbanda in order to bolster their flocks. It is a confrontation that some have compared to the culture wars in the US, and one in which Brazil's reputation as an open and tolerant rainbow nation is undermined by firebrand pastors who conduct exorcisms of lesbians and gay men and pronounce that African-Brazilian religions are the work of "Satanás". "Here" is on the frontline of an increasingly venomous feud with a legion of outspoken and unashamedly radical evangelical preachers.
Sometimes I feel like Don Quixote, you know?" said the 37-year-old former Big Brother contestant who has been called South America's answer to Harvey Milk, the San Francisco politician and gay rights activist assassinated in 1978.
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