Brazil’s rabidly anti-gay president, Jair Bolsonaro, is falsely accusing the World Health Organization of encouraging children to masturbate and try “same-sex relations.”
Like President Donald Trump, Bolsonaro has been a vocal critic of WHO’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Earlier this month, Trump announced the U.S. would halt funding for the U.N. agency.
In a Facebook post late Wednesday that he later deleted, Bolsonaro’s attacks on WHO took a strange new turn.
“This is the World Health Organization whose advice on coronavirus some people want me to follow,” he wrote. “Should we follow their education policy guidelines, too? For children zero to four years old: satisfaction and pleasure when touching their bodies, masturbation…. For children four to six years old: a positive gender identity… masturbation in early childhood, same-sex relations…. Nine to 12 years old: first sexual experience.”
More from Yahoo News: The origin of the information appeared to be a 2010 guide called “Standards for Sexuality Education in Europe,” published by Germany’s Federal Centre for Health Education and the WHO’s European office. Though not its main focus, the guide briefly explains that young children are typically discovering their bodies, and tells parents and educators that behavior such as touching oneself and curiosity about sexuality are normal in kids. But it does not call on them to encourage any of the behaviors mentioned by Bolsonaro. … Sometimes called the “Tropical Trump,” Bolsonaro, like his US counterpart, is an avid social media user, firing up his core supporters on Facebook and Twitter. He has regularly been at odds with the WHO since the coronavirus pandemic began. He says social distancing measures are needlessly wrecking the economy over a virus he compares to a “little flu,” and recently fired Health minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta, who was popular with his pro-confinement, pro-science handling of the crisis.
