Gay Hispanic couples face fierce bias

[davidinalameda]

http://www.detnews.com/2005/editorial/0503/14/A11-115966.htm

Maria Larrea was just 8 months old in 1960 when her family fled communist dictator Fidel Castro's Cuba for the promise of freedom in America.

"You arrived with the shirt on your back and carrying a diaper bag," she recalls of Cuban exile families like her own, which included her two brothers, her pregnant mother and her father, who left behind a successful business in Cuba. "My parents sacrificed everything for their children."

Freedom, loyalty, family, responsibility, hard work. Maria's father taught her to value those qualities. He toiled as a bellhop and milkman before building a successful import-export business in this country.

Maria saw her father's values were sincere when she eventually confided in him that she'd always known she was gay.