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Gay weddings are beautiful. They were first instituted in 2001; first in the Netherlands, then Belgium, Finland, and Spain. After courageous battles waged by sex and gender rights activists, same-sex loving couples can now marry in eighteen countries.
There is a feeling of defiance at gay weddings, of strength, of pride. Pride from being out of the closet - being out to family and friends, and from surviving insults, injury and discrimination. Marriage rights for same-sex couples gives legal rights to couples if one is sick or dies, gives legal rights to children raised in the relationship, and importantly gives social recognition, to counter ignorance and discrimination.
Equality for queer couples is paramount to reducing anxiety and stress. A Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health study, in 2010, examined the effects of institutional discrimination on the psychiatric health of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) individuals and found an increase in psychiatric disorders, including a more than doubling of anxiety disorders, among the LGB population living in states that instituted bans on same-sex marriage.
Cuba will be holding a mass gay wedding as its main event for the annual lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) pride parade there on May 17 - the International Day of Action against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT). The event is organised by the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), which forms part of an awareness campaign aimed at eliminating prejudice, and granting full legal rights to Cuba’s LGBT couples.
The weddings will not be recognised by the Cuban government, because the revolutionary government has not passed marriage equality laws yet. While this needs to be rectified, Cuba is now a leading Latin America country on LGBT rights. A rainbow revolution is being led by Mariela Castro, daughter of feminist revolutionary Vilma Espin and current president Raul Castro.
Espin is internationally renowned. A sexologist by training, she edits Sexology and Society, a medical journal published in Cuba. In an interview in 2006 with Gail Reed, published in the journal Health and Medical News of Cuba: Espin says that CENESEX’s goals are to contribute towards, “the development of a culture of sexuality that is full, pleasurable and responsible, as well as to promote the full exercise of sexual rights.”
In the interview she notes, “We have to include a gender perspective − promotion of new constructs of masculinity and femininity − and not just take an epidemiological approach. For example, an epidemiologist might simply say: prevent HIV, use a condom. But we have to take into consideration how condoms are viewed in the “macho” framework − as a barrier to full sexual enjoyment, to which the “macho” is entitled at all costs, in a relation in which he’s exerting his power. So, for him to use a condom, he has to begin to construct and define his masculinity in a different way, that doesn’t put a premium only on his own pleasure. You need to combine both an epidemiological and a gender approach to these very intimate issues. This is why, for example, our posters and other materials emphasize that protection of your partner against HIV and STIs in general is a sign of caring and that means it’s a responsibility of both partners in a relationship.”
The Cuban revolution has not always been a haven for the rainbow community. After the US invasion at Playa Giron, in 1961, Cuba had to militarise its revolution. Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses and religious objectors, were incarcerated in military camps (UMAPs) between 1965 and 1968. This was a “terrifying time” for Cuba’s homosexuals, noted Ian Lumsdan, author of Machos, maricones, and gays : Cuba and homosexuality. A 2012 article by Don Fitz and Jacquelyn Omotalade in Cienfuegos, Cuba 'Eyewitness Cuba: March Against Homophobia celebrates new outlook' noted that, “Every lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Cuban knows of the years 1965–68 when homosexuals were grouped with counterrevolutionaries and sent to obligatory work duty with UMAP.” Fitz and Omotalade’s article noted that while “massive HIV education campaigns in the 1990s treated homosexuality as a fact of life, the scars remain.”
UMAPs were closed down in 1968 following protests by the Cuban Union of Writers and Artists Federation (UNEAC) and Raquel Revuelta who had been a prominent Cuban Communist Party member before the 1959 victory, notes Richard Roques in the article, “Gay rights in Cuba.”
The Cuban government realized its mistake. In an interview with Ignacio Ramonet, Fidel Castro said, “They weren’t units of internment or punishment… However, after a visit I discovered the distortion in some places, of the original idea, because you can’t deny that there were prejudices against homosexuals. I personally started a review of this matter. Those units only lasted three years.”
From 1979, Cuba began to remove their homophobic laws, and by 1989 the government was teaching anti-homophobic sex education message in all schools, through a re-published book written by East Germans Sigfried Schnabl’s 'The Intimate Life of Males and Females'. Schnabl wrote, “There is no cure for homosexuality and it is not a kind of sickness. Therefore, nobody should be criticized for (their) orientation, nor be pressured to change. On the contrary, they should get the support they need to be able to live happily.”
The argument that Cuba was virulently anti-gay was fueled by the US. In 1999 the US Department of Homeland Security, Citizenship and Immigration Services produced a report titled Cuba: Status of Homosexuals, which argued, “Freedom for Cuban gays and lesbians continued to be limited… social intolerance remains widespread, particularly outside the capital of Havana, stemming from the strong strain of machismo in Cuban cultural which was reinforced by decades of government persecution.”
Queer rights advocates fell behind the propaganda campaign. “The Castro regime has been ferociously anti-gay,” exclaimed Dale Carpenter in Outright, an online gay magazine, as just one example of gay rights activists who swallowed imperialism’s line.
Of course, the US government’s critique of gay rights in Cuba is hypocritical. Before 2003, 14 states in the US held that sodomy was a crime. Until 2003, the felony of sodomy in Michigan was punishable by 15 years in jail for the first conviction and life imprisonment for the second conviction.
In reality, Cuba has been advancing a very consistently progressive sex and gender rights program. In 2007, Ricardo Alarcon, then president of Cuba’s National Assembly, stated at the assembly meeting, “We have to abolish any form of discrimination against homosexuality... Socialism should be a society that does not exclude anybody.” Homophobic laws began to be repealed in 1973, and by 2011, no mention of homosexuality exists in legislation. The first sex change operation to take place in Cuba was in 1988. Sex reassignment surgery, as part of public health care in Cuba was institutionalized on a large scale in 2008. Like all medical procedures in Cuba, it is free. Assisted reproductive technology for lesbian couples became available in 2008.
The government has produced very stylish sexual diversity rights ads which are shown regularly on state television. When I visited Cuba in 2009 I saw them – they showed same-sex couples going about their daily life and end with the message, "Homophobia is the disease, not homosexuality, diversity is natural." A half-hour youth program that screened while I was in Cuba interviewed young and old Cubans about attitudes to transgendered people. Attitudes were supportive.
As noted by the United Nations, Cuba has one of the lowest HIV/AIDS rates in the world with a 0.1 percent infection rate. In contrast, the US rate is six times greater. All HIV treatment, related drugs, medicines and care are free. This greatly assists the gay male population of Cuba.
Thanks to the work of CENESEX, supported by the government, there are nationwide LGBT rights festivals and marches every May – based around the May 17 International Day of Action Against Homophobia and Transphobia, (IDAHOT) institutionalized in 2004. IDAHOT commemorates the day when homosexuality was taken off the World Health Organizations’ ‘International Classification of Diseases,’ in 1990. This years theme is ‘Stand with LGBTQI youth’.
Internationally, we still have reason to protest and march. The International International Gay and Lesbian Association (ILGA) launched the 10th edition of its annual report ‘State-Sponsored Homophobia, a world survey of laws: criminalisation, protection and recognition of same-sex love.’ The report noted that, “More than one-third of the world’s states consider same-sex sexual activity illegal. There are 76 countries where same-sex sexual acts are still illegal, and 2013 saw an alarming rise in the number of states considering a new wave of criminalisation through “homosexual propaganda.” Eight states officially legislate for the death penalty for homosexual acts, with five (Mauritania, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen) implementing it. A sixth State, Iraq, although not in the civil code, has judges and militias throughout the country that issue the death sentence for same-sex sexual behaviors.”Further, some provinces in Nigeria and Somalia officially implement the death penalty. Worryingly, “in the Daesh(ISIS)-held areas the death penalties implemented, although it is a non-state actor.”
However, LGBT rights campaigning has netted significant victories. Marriage is open for same-sex couples in 18 countries, including in Luxembourg and Slovenia, says the report.
In Cuba, For May 17, all across the country, IDAHOT events have been organized. It is only a matter of time before Cuba catches up with Argentina, and legalizes same-sex marriage and adoption rights. In Cuba, homophobia in state policy and popular culture, is low compared to the rest of Latin America and the US. Indeed, thanks to the efforts of the LGBTQI community, CENESEX, and Mariela Castro, today Cuba is more advanced in rainbow rights than most countries in the global South and the US.
Rachel Evans is author of Rainbow Cuba: the sexual revolution within the revolution, an activist in the marriage equality campaign in Australia, a member of Socialist Alliance and a journalist with Green Left Weekly.
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