Rainbow Catholics: Case Study of a Brazilian Catholic LGBT Group

In the last three decades, various lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Catholic groups have emerged. Currently, forty-two (42) of these groups are members of the “Global Network of Rainbow Catholics" (GNRC), established in 2015 to work “for the inclusion, dignity and equality of this community in the Roman Catholic Church and society”, as their mission statement declares.

In this paper will be presented the results of a two-year fieldwork with the group Diversidade Católica. This group is a member of the GNRC and the eldest Brazilian catholic-LGBT association. Based on ethnographic methods and semi-structured interviews, the study analyzes how and why these people decide to publicly identify with a religious institution that has historically condemned and punished their ways of constructing gender and sexuality. In essence, why do these rainbow Catholic groups exist in the opinion of their members? How do they understand and define their institutional belonging as both Catholic and rainbow?

The above questions serve to show the key finding predicted in this paper: which is that the group has chosen a non-combative way of acting within the ecclesial space. This is a significantly different strategy to that of many other Catholic groups, such as Catholics for Choice, who have a more conflictual modus operandi. The paper will discuss the reasons and the extent of this decision as analyzed during the fieldwork.

Finally, this work fills a gap within the sociological literature with respect to this subject. Most of the research done in the Latin-American context has been focussed on the experience of LGBT Evangelical Christians. It is this lacuna in research and reflection that this paper offers.