Under Obama admin pressure, Cuba considers recognizing homosexual unions
January 24, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - As the administration of President Barack Obama budgets hundreds of thousands of dollars to homosexual dissident groups in Cuba, the island’s communist government is looking at pass legislation normalizing gay unions.
Mariela Castro, the daughter of Cuban president Raul Castro, told Cuba’s state-run press this week that homosexual unions are now “included in the legislative plan for 2012.”
Mariela Castro
“At this time, the proposal of a bill for the modification of the Family Code is being analyzed by specialists from the Ministry of Justice and by professionals affiliated with the National Union of Cuban Jurists,” Castro told Cuba Sí.
During the interview, Castro referred specifically to the $300,000 budgeted by the U.S. State Department in 2011 to, “strengthen the inclusion of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community” on the island.
Castro accused the U.S. government of promoting “media campaigns to discredit the spirituality of the revolutionary project” and said that Cuba was “exposing the resources of the North American taxpayer allocated to lie, defame, demonize, and collapse” the Cuban regime.
The U.S. State Department said that the funds were to be used “to strengthen grassroots organizations to create the conditions that allow meaningful and unhindered participation by members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community in all aspects of Cuban society,” according to a post on its website dated June 16, 2011 and now in Google Cache.
Goals listed for the program include “providing management and organizational skills training; facilitating networking among LGBT associations, student groups, and other organizations; and capacity building for public events, publications.” Other goals include “promoting advocacy activities” and “awareness-raising activities to affect negative societal attitudes against LGBT persons and better inform members of the LGBT community about their rights, especially outside of Havana; for example, working with local groups to organize Pride parades and festivals, HIV/AIDS awareness campaigns, etc.”
Marliela Castro, a trained “sexologist” who speaks in favor of special rights for homosexuals and “transgender people,” has attempted to head off U.S. attempts to foment homosexualist dissent within Cuba by organizing state-approved “gay” groups, which engage in limited public demonstrations in favor of the homosexual agenda. Castro reportedly uses the events to promote other political causes dear to the heart of the communist regime, causing discomfort among some homosexuals.
Until recently, the Cuban government’s policy has been to reject the demands of homosexualism. Fidel Castro publicly denounced homosexual behavior as a “bourgeois perversion” in the 1960s and made homosexual acts illegal. Although the law was eliminated in 1998, public manifestations of homosexuality are still punishable under public decency statutes, which are increasingly ignored as the government accedes to the gay agenda.
