MIAMI – Cubans are established to vote on a new spouse and children code and no matter whether to legalize exact same-sex relationship.
On Sunday, Cuba is owing to maintain a very long-awaited referendum to overhaul the more than four a long time previous relatives code that if passed for the first time would allow gay and lesbian partners to legally wed and undertake small children.
“I believe that we are all equal in phrases of rights, solutions, alternatives,” stated Annery Rivera Velasco who just lately married Yennys in a symbolic ceremony considering that identical unions are not lawful in Cuba. “In conditions of staying a citizen and expressing that citizenship, I never believe we are less than the rest of culture.”
It really is been a long battle for LGBTQ rights in Cuba.
At the beginning of Fidel Castro’s revolution, gay individuals ended up sent together with other individuals, deemed by the new federal government to be undesirables, to toil in get the job done camps.
Gradually nevertheless there has been escalating formal acceptance of gays, lesbians, and transgender people in Cuba.
Raul Castro’s daughter Mariela has been a vocal supporter of LGBTQ rights and sponsors a parade against homophobia.
The new tolerance even though has had limitations. In 2018, Cuban lawmakers eradicated language authorizing exact intercourse unions from a proposed new structure amid fears that voters would reject it. A lot of in Cuba’s evangelical group say they will vote “no” on the new relatives code.
The escalating affect of the evangelical church in Cuba is one particular of the key motives it has taken so extensive to legalize gay marriage. Cubans from other parts of culture could sign up for them in voting “no.”
“It is really not just Christians. There are communists who are not in settlement, and materialistic individuals not in settlement. A whole lot of persons who believe that in distinct factors that you should not concur with the alterations they want to make with the new household code,” claimed evangelical Pastor Yoel Serrano.
But other folks of faith embrace the notion of legalized similar sexual intercourse relationship.
A church in Matanzas is a single of only a handful conducting exact same intercourse marriages and encouraging parishioners to vote for the new family members code.
“I have religion that like will earn,” claimed Elaine Saralegui Caraballo with the Metropolitan Neighborhood Church of Matanzas. “If it truly is a “certainly” or a “no” it is the same, we explain to our neighborhood no 1 can choose away your value, who you are.”
Annery and Yennys claimed if the household code passes, they will also keep a civil wedding.
