Anti-gay MP to run human rights commission

An anti-gay evangelical politician has been elected by Brazil’s House of Representatives to run the country’s Human Rights and Minority Commission.

The Christian Social Party’s Marco Feliciano has previously called AIDS a “gay cancer” and said that Africans are cursed.

“Noah’s curse on his grandson, Canaan, lingers in Africa, therefore leading to all the hunger, diseases, ethnic wars,” The Latin America Bureau reports Feliciano as saying.

The commission has a role looking at everything from issues of potential human rights violations to prospective legislation, the BBC reports.

There have been protests over the decision to appoint Feliciano and a petition calling for his resignation has reached 450,000 signatures.

He denies being prejudiced against gay people, saying only that he was “against their practices, their promiscuity”.