The assailant struck as Gabriel Figueira Lima, 21, stood on a street two weeks ago in a city in the Amazon, plunging a knife into his neck and speeding off on the back of a motorcycle, leaving him to die. A few days earlier, in the coastal state of Bahia, two beloved teachers, Edivaldo Silva de Oliveira and Jeovan Bandeira, were killed as well, their charred remains found in the trunk of a burning car.Late last month, it was Wellington Júlio de Castro Mendonça, a shy, 24-year-old retail clerk, who was bludgeoned and stoned to death.In a nation seemingly inured to crime, the brutal killings stood out: The victims were not robbed, the police have yet to identify any suspects, and all of the dead were either gay or transgender.While Americans have fiercely debated how to respond to the massacre last month at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, Brazilians have been confronting their own epidemic of anti-gay violence - one that, by some counts, has earned Brazil the ignominious ranking of the world's deadliest place for lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgender people.Nearly 1600 people have died in hate-motivated attacks in the past four-and-a-half years, according to Grupo Gay da Bahia, which tracks the deaths through news articles. By its tally, a gay or transgender person is killed almost every day in this nation of 200 million."And these numbers represent only the tip of the iceberg of violence and bloodshed," said Eduardo Michels, the group's data manager, adding that the Brazilian police often omit anti-gay animus when compiling homicide reports.Such statistics can be hard to square with Brazil's storied image as a tolerant, open society - a nation that seemingly nurtures freewheeling expressions of sexuality during Carnival and holds the world's biggest gay pride parade in the city of São Paulo.Here in Rio de Janeiro, host to the coming Summer Olympics, fear of violent crime is on many people's minds. Amid a crushing recession and soaring unemployment, street crime is up 24% this year and homicides have increased by more than 15%. At the same time, human rights activists say members of the Rio police force, eager to clean up the city ahead of the August 5 opening ceremony for the Games, have shot dead more than 100 people this year, most of them young black men living in poor neighbourhoods.But advocates say the constant homophobic violence also threatens to upend an idealised national ethos that promises equality and respect for all Brazilians."We live off this image as an open and tolerant place," said Jandira Queiroz, the mobilisation co-ordinator at Amnesty International Brazil. "Homophobic violence has hit crisis levels, and it's getting worse."Brazil's near-mythic reputation for tolerance is not without justification. In the nearly three decades since democracy replaced military dictatorship, the Brazilian government has introduced numerous laws and policies aimed at improving the lives of sexual minorities. In 1996, it was among the first to offer free antiretroviral drugs to people with HIV. In 2003, Brazil became the first country in Latin America to recognise same-sex unions for immigration purposes, and it was among the earliest to allow gay couples to adopt children.In 2013, the Brazilian judiciary effectively legalised same-sex marriage.Some experts suggest that liberal government policies may have gone too far ahead of traditional social mores. The anti-gay violence, they contend, can be traced to Brazil's culture of machismo and a brand of evangelical Christianity, exported from the US, that is outspoken in its opposition to homosexuality.Evangelicals make up nearly a quarter of Brazil's population, and they have voted in more than 60 lawmakers to the 513-member lower house of Congress, doubling their numbers since 2010.Jean Wyllys, Brazil's only openly gay member of Congress, said evangelical lawmakers, the core of a coalition known as the "BBB caucus" - short for Bullets, Beef and Bible - have stymied legislation that would punish anti-gay discrimination and increase penalties for hate crimes.Eduardo Cunha, an evangelical Christian radio commentator who served as president of the lower house, once suggested that Congress establish a Heterosexual Pride Day. After a Brazilian soap opera featured a gay kiss, he tweeted his revulsion. (Cunha, who faces allegations that he took $40-million in bribes, was ordered to step down in May.)During a televised presidential debate in 2014, one of the candidates, Levy Fidelix, said that homosexuals were unfit to be parents and that "excretory systems aren't for reproduction". Jair Bolsonaro, a congressman well known for his conservative views, has recommended corporal punishment as a tool for turning gays into heterosexuals.Javier Corrales, a political scientist at Amherst College who studies gay rights movements in Latin America, said: "Brazilians are becoming more tolerant, but the counter-trend is that those who remain intolerant and opposed to LGBT rights are developing new strategies and a more virulent discourse to block progress on those issues."Even when suspects in homophobic violence are arrested, activists say, they are often treated leniently. The two men who savagely beat André Baliera, a 28-year-old law student, in an upscale neighbourhood of São Paulo were originally charged with attempted murder. Last year, after serving a two-month sentence, the men were ordered to pay a $6300 fine and released. - New York Times..