OMG, Araci, I had so hoped that Portugal was above this kind of close-minded lunacy. In the US, we're battling an entire party that wants to redesign how we teach history, delegitimize gay rights, and prohibit the word gay from even being uttered in schools.

It goes way beyond that, however. The party is influenced by toxic religious people who are cruel and backwards in their thinking. They'd even like to do away with birth control. I shudder when I think of this trend across the western world, dragging us back to the Dark Ages.

How did this happen? On more than one occasion I've stood in the Plaza Major in Madrid where executions and torture used to take place and allowed myself to remember what humans can and willingly do to other humans when given the stamp of approval by their cultures. It's so disturbing.