DISCOURSES ABOUT THE CRIMINALIZATION OF HOMOPHOBIA AND TRANSPHOBIA IN THE NEWS PORTAL O ANTAGONISTA

ABSTRACT In this paper, we present a sample of the results of the research Discursive facets around the criminalization of homophobia and transphobia (TAVARES, 2019), whose objective was to analyze how the decision of the Brazilian Federal Supreme Court to typify homophobia and transphobia as a crime was mobilized in a chain of discursive events published by the news portal O Antagonista. Based on the theoretical assumptions of critical discourse studies and using the language of description of the transitivity system, we take three texts from the corpus to show how the events and social actors involved are represented, which discourses such texts update and what potential meaning effects they have. The results indicate that the representation thematizes the possible discontent of religious people and erases the benefits to the LGBTQIA+ community. Such erasure is used ideologically to sustain LGBTphobia as a social structure in which LGBTQIA+ lives are unimportant or not worthy of protection.