When he realized Jair Bolsonaro was likely to be elected president of Brazil last year, politician David Miranda’s first concern was for his family, rather than his career.

As an openly gay man adopting two children, Miranda worried that Bolsonaro could revoke many of Brazil’s LGBT+ rights, including gay adoption.

Just three months later, the 33-year-old was propelled into the public spotlight when Jean Wyllys - one of Brazil’s only openly gay congressmen - fled the country saying violence had increased in the wake of Bolsonaro’s win.

Miranda took Wyllys’s seat, joining a small but increasingly determined group of LGBT+ politicians prepared to take on the right-wing president, a former army captain who has described himself as a “proud” homophobe.

“I felt like this was a big blow for democracy,” Miranda told the Thomson Reuters Foundation of Wyllys’s exile.

“But at the same time, I know the work that I’m going to do, and how I’m going to be a strong voice for the LGBT community, for the black community, and for democracy in general in Brazil. Read more via Reuters