Foreign Ministry Explains Controversial "Sexual Orientation" Vote to Activists

[Judi Lynn]

Foreign Ministry Explains Controversial "Sexual Orientation" Vote to Activists
By Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Dec 2, 2010 (IPS) - Gay rights advocates in Cuba received an unprecedented response from Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez, in a meeting held at the ministry itself, after they complained about this country’s support in the United Nations for an amendment seen as a step backwards from the government’s position against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

"A summary of the conversation will be on my blog in a few hours," journalist and gay activist Francisco Rodríguez Cruz told IPS shortly after emerging from Wednesday’s meeting, which was also attended by Cuban Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno.

The reporter, who is better known by the name of his blog, "Paquito el de Cuba", said the meeting "was as unexpected as it was useful and beneficial.

"All of the people taking part in the meeting learned something from it," said the blogger, a member of Cuba’s ruling Communist Party. He is one of the protagonists of what could, without exaggeration, be described as a historic moment: the first formal meeting between a Cuban foreign minister and representatives of this country’s gay community, which has only recently begun to openly organise.

More:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53755

[Peace Patriot]

1. Interesting that someone would unrec this post, when the article makes the Cuban political

...establishment look a bit foolish, two-faced and, um, wafflers just like our Democratic leaders. You'd think that our usual RW crew would revel in seeing Cuban leaders squirm, caught out by gay activists in a smarmy vote at the UN and backpedaling like crazy.

Well, maybe these RW unreccers are homophobic as well as shills for our multinational corporate/war profiteer rulers. Or is that one point of the article--that the Cuban government RESPONDED to the criticism, and INVITED the critics to talks, sticks in their craw and they want to do everything they can to suppress this evidence of a responsive and accountable government, cuz we're supposed to think that the Cuban government is monstrous, oppressive and anti-human rights and should be invaded and all their leaders killed and Batista's heirs put back in charge, or, short of that, maybe some bombings of airplanes and hotels would teach them how to kiss capitalist ass, but if we learn that Cuba's government listens to people, maybe we'll put such bombers in jail instead of on CIA salary?

Could that be why they unrecc'd this post?

I know that that got a little incoherent, but, hey, try to get inside a Miami mafioso mind, and you might end up a blithering idiot. These are people who would unrec posts for no goddamn reason at all, but just because they have the word "Cuba" in them. No matter that the post is interesting and not especially flattering to the Cuban government.

:silly:

:argh:

[social_critic]

2. Now they need the head of the Secret Police to meet with the people

To explain whether his job is to protect the people, or to protect the government from the people.

[Judi Lynn]

3. GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS IN CUBA

GAY AND LESBIAN RIGHTS IN CUBA

PRE-REVOLUTIONARY CUBA
In common with other countries in the region, the history of the Cuban
gay and lesbian community has been an unhappy one. The revolution of
1959 inherited legislation introduced in 1938 – the Public Ostentation Law -
which imposed a six-month prison sentence (or equivalent fine) on anyone
who “habitually engaged in homosexual acts”, who sexually propositioned
someone or who “created a public scandal” by openly “flaunting his
homosexuality in public”(2). Intellectuals, writers and artists were
associated with homosexuality and therefore found themselves denigrated
by a society characterised by its machista values, cultural backwardness
and adherence to the Roman Catholic Church which viewed same-sex
relationships as a sexual aberration. Socially the subject was considered
taboo.
To make matters worse, illicit gay sex was a component of the
prostitution industry that thrived in Cuba before the Revolution, Cuba being
viewed the biggest off-shore brothel in the Caribbean.

1959 – 1969
Official and public attitudes towards gays and lesbians did not
change with the arrival of the Revolution. In addition to the traditional
machista culture and Catholic values, Cuba’s new ally, the USSR held
equally hostile policies towards gays and lesbians, seeing homosexuality
as a product of the decadent capitalist society prevailing in Cuba in the
1950s. Furthermore, in a society which was the target of increasing
hostility by its close and powerful neighbour, the United States,
culminating in the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the Missile Crisis of
1962, the gay community was seen as a threat to the military order.

~snip~
Understandably there were protests against the UMAP camps from all
quarters. In his article ‘The Sexual Politics of Reinaldo Arenas: Fact,
Fiction and the Real Record of the Cuban Revolution’ (3), Jon Hillson
describes how Fidel Castro visited one such camp incognito to experience
the treatment for himself. He was followed by 100 boys from the
Communist Youth whose identity was also kept secret. In 1968, shortly
after these visits, the camps closed.

~snip~
....Cuba is now
considered one of the more open and tolerant societies in the region
towards lesbians and gays.

More:
http://www.cuba-solidarity.org.uk/faqdocs/Cuba-sexual-diversity.pdf

(emphasis added)