Quote: João Silvério Trevisan and Mário Miranda

JOÃO SILVÉRIO TREVISAN (at right, from 43people.com): Do you think there's a saint who is dedicated to protecting gays?
MARIA APARECIDA (A BABALORIXÁ): Ah, I'll tell you the saint who is dedicated to protecting gays: Oxumaré. Oxumaré is a very well-known saint in the south. Today everyone here [in the northern Brazilian city of Recife] is doing Oxumaré. With Oxumaré you love rainbows, nature. When this saint talks in a man's head he becomes gay: six months a woman, six months a man. So for six months he is love with men, goes and looks for men wherever they might be. And for six months he doesn't care about men, he can even about-face, get a woman or a girlfriend. Now, when Oxumaré falls on a woman's head, she becomes a lesbian, right? She doesn't like men, starts to like women and sometimes gets money from a man to keep a woman. This Oxumaré is the protector of gays.
TREVISAN: Which saint does he correspond to in the Catholic Church?
M. APARECIDA: Our Lady of the Apparition.*

--João Silvério Trevisan and Mário Miranda, a Recife-based Candomblé babalorixá using the name Maria Aparecida (Mary of the Apparition), in "Interview with a Babalorixá," from Perverts in Paradise (London: GMP Publishers Ltd., 1986), p. 179.
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*Our Lady of the Apparition (our Our Lady of Aparecida/Our Lady Aparecida), who appeared in 1717 in the form of a dark-brown statuette fished by three fisherman from the Paraíba River, in São Paulo, is also the patron saint of Brazil. Her feast day is October 12, and the shrine is one of the most visited in the world.