Cuba approves same-sex marriage in historic turnabout – The Washington Post
In addition to approving same-sex marriage, the legislation will allow gay couples to adopt, and increase the rights of women, the elderly and children.
Supporters call it a sign of the progress on LGBTQ+ rights under Cuba’s Communist government, which was once so hostile to gay men that it sent them to forced labor camps for “reeducation.” Yet leaders of the influential Roman Catholic Church and the island’s growing evangelical movement expressed unusually vocal dissent.
“It reminds me very much of the debate we had in Canada and the U.S. 10 or 20 years ago, about the role of the family, the role of gay rights,” said John Kirk, a Cuba scholar at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia.
What makes Cuba different is the political context. Gay rights activism has been channeled largely through the single-party system, rather than independent civil-society groups, which are restricted. The government promoted the new law on billboards, at rallies and in official media. President Miguel Díaz-Canel on Thursday urged Cubans in a televised address to vote for the code, tying the balloting to support for the political system.
“Voting ‘yes’ is saying yes to unity, to the revolution, to socialism,” he said.
That rankled government critics, who noted that Cubans were rarely given the opportunity to vote freely on other matters — such as choosing their leaders.
The vote comes at a time of widespread anger over food and electricity shortages. The economy is still hobbled by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic and extra U.S. sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and partially maintained by the Biden administration. Some Cubans called for a protest vote.
“I understand that the rejection of the dictatorship will prompt many people to want to vote ‘no,’ reflexively, so that the regime suffers a symbolic defeat,” independent journalist Mario Luis Reyes told the news site 14ymedio, run by the Cuban dissident Yoani Sánchez. “But if the ‘no’ wins, those who will really be defeated are us.”
The 100-page family code reflects a sea change in official attitudes toward gay rights in Cuba.
In the 1960s, after the triumph of Fidel Castro’s revolution, the Communist government exalted the “new socialist man” and repressed dissidents of all kinds. Gay citizens were fired from jobs and even sent to labor camps.
A leading figure in transforming such homophobic attitudes was sexologist Mariela Castro, the daughter of Fidel’s brother and fellow revolutionary, Raúl. She runs a government sex-education institute and is a prominent advocate of gay rights.
Today, workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation is outlawed, and the public health system provides gender-reassignment surgery free of charge.
The new law will expand not just gay rights but also protections for women, children and the elderly. It urges couples to share housework equally, condemns family violence and insists that kids have a voice in family decisions.
“So this goes against the traditional paterfamilias [model], with the Latin father being in charge,” Kirk said.
Cuba’s Catholic bishops and other Christian religious leaders spoke out strongly against the proposal.
“The proposal is permeated by what is known as ‘gender ideology,’ which, as often happens with ideologies, is a construction of ideas that people want to impose by force onto reality, and wind up distorting it,” the Cuban Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement.
The new measure, which replaces a 1975 family code, was discussed in more than 79,000 community meetings between February and April, and amended based on citizens’ suggestions. Cuba’s National Assembly passed it in July. The code easily surpassed the 50 percent margin needed to take effect, but fell short of the near-total support that government-backed proposals typically receive in referendums.
While the government billed the referendum as an exercise in democracy, some critics said the rights of gay people shouldn’t be subject to a vote.
“The fact they are asking people what they think about the rights of a minority shows they don’t really understand how democracies work,” said Juan Pappier, senior Americas researcher for Human Rights Watch.
Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul contributed to this report.