Cuba published a long-awaited draft of a new family code on Wednesday that would open the door to gay marriage if approved, in a move that LGBT rights activists applauded cautiously as they remained wary of whether it would actually be implemented.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/81226

Cuba published a long-awaited draft of a new family code on Wednesday that would open the door to gay marriage if approved, in a move that LGBT rights activists applauded cautiously as they remained wary of whether it would actually be implemented.

The new code defines marriage as the “voluntary union of two people” without specifying gender, as opposed to the current definition as the “union of a man and woman.”

The draft still needs to go to a grassroots debate, however, and will then be amended to take into account citizens’ opinions before going to a referendum. Activists fear the commission charged with it could relent under pushback from religious groups and those who prefer traditional machismo culture.

They say the government should not have stipulated a referendum on what are fundamental human rights. The government says it wants to build rather than force acceptance of change.

In 2018 the government decided to withdraw an amendment to Cuba’s new constitution that would have opened the door to same-sex unions after campaigning by evangelical churches.

“The blueprint for the family code is everything one could have hoped for,” said Maykel Gonzalez Vivero, director of Tremenda Nota, a digital magazine that focuses on women, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community and the Black community.

“It took a long time and there was no transparency in its interminable process of nearly 15 years. But it’s there.”

Cuba, which sent gays to correctional labor camps in the early years after its 1959 leftist revolution, made considerable advances in LGBT rights in the 2000s and 2010s, despite the widespread persistence of machismo.

The island nation introduced the right to free sex reassignment surgery, banned workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and started holding annual marches against homophobia - Cuba’s equivalent of gay pride.

Many members of the LGBT community say, however, they have been frustrated by a slowdown in the pace of change in recent years while a handful of other Latin American countries have moved forward with approving gay marriage.

    • TheConquestOfBed
      121·
      3 years ago

      A Dictatorship of the Proletariat is not a dictatorship in the traditional sense. Cuba has a legislature of 605 representatives, half of which are women, and a black president. And the 2019 constitution bans discrimination based on sexuality and gender identity on top of race and such which already were codified previously. Citizens are able to propose new legislation directly by gathering signatures, and according to the article this draft will go through a debate and referendum before going to a vote. A lot of this procedure has been in place since the 70s. Foreign powers mostly take offense to the single-party system, but countries basing their government on the soviet model hold that the party exists to ensure that the country stays true to the course of the revolution and does not liberalize back into its pre-revolutionary (often colonized) status.

        • TheConquestOfBed
          10·
          3 years ago

          Even in the wiki summary if you look through these it will say “X demonstrators were arrested for colluding with American Govt Officials to commit counter-revolutionary activity”. The US is not afraid to use human rights as a wedge to achieve its aims.

          Example: even on the US’s own soil trans people now have less rights than Cuban trans people, and this is designed intentionally to leverage democrat and republican votes. US parties and private interests put millions of dollars into think tanks, news headlines, and grassroots campaigns to increase the ideological distance between pro-trans and anti-trans demonstrators and it can and does lead to politically motivated violence against us. All to maintain the illusion of “wasted votes” on candidates outside the dominant neoliberal ideology. As long as there’s a ‘bad guy’ they can split the proletariat into opposing ideological subgroups that feel trapped within their political system.

          At least if I were Cuban I could get free surgery, courtesy of the Party. I’m happy that they’re finally realizing that the way to overcome human rights meddling is to just do human rights better.

        • drop
          51·
          3 years ago

          “dictatorship of the proletariat” just means that the proletariat (the workers) is the class which holds the political power.
          That is in contrast to the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”, which refers to states where the bourgeoisie - the class which owns the means of production - holds the political power. Spain, Sweden, USA, Germany, etc. are examples of these states.