Chrysóstomo's Case: Criminalization and Pathologization of Homosexuality during 1980s Brazil

Abstract

This paper aims to present an exploratory study of the case of Antônio Chrysóstomo, the journalist who was one of the founders of the newspaper written by homosexuals - Lampião da Esquina - as well as a protagonist in the first known same-sex adoption in Brazil, still in the mid-1980s. He is accused - by the daughter of his maid and neighbors - of sexually abusing the child. Through a literature review and archival ethnography conducted at the Edgard Leuenroth Archive (AEL), I explore how homosexuality is inserted into that context of democratic opening, as well as conduct an analysis of the case through Michel Misse's critical criminology, understanding how medical and legal knowledge shared with society at the time a pathologizing notion of homosexuality that, when articulated, constructs the legal truth that condemns the journalist by associating his homosexuality with pedophilia.