SAO PAULO, Brazil (AFP) – About 50 Brazilian protesters responded with kisses Sunday at a bar that had kicked out a presumed lesbian couple for embracing in public.

The management of the bar in the town of Ribeirao Preto said in a statement the women, ages 22 and 23, had been shown the door a week ago for “inappropriate behavior.”

The women immediately filed a complaint with the police and a Brazilian lawyers’ association commission against homophobia.

At Sunday’s protests, youths carried signs denouncing homophobia and engaged in a “beijaco,” or collective kissing, as police looked on.

Then four homosexual couples were permitted to enter the bar and engage in long embraces.

In 2013, 312 homosexuals, transvestites and transexuals were murdered in Brazil, a 7.7 percent drop from the previous year, but enough for the Bahia Gay Group to dub the country the “world champion of crimes against gays.”

Brazil accounts for 40 percent of all crimes against gays in Latin America.

A bill to punish homophobia has been sidelined for years in the Brazilian Congress by resistance from Catholices and Protestant Evangelicals.

In 2011, however, the Supreme Court guaranteed same-sex couples in stable unions the same rights as heterosexual couples.