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Cuban Parliament Considers Equal Rights Law for Gays |
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Written by Alternative Wire Services
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 Cuban legislators are considering today a proposed new law that would grant equal rights to all citizens, including gays, lesbians & transgender individuals. The draft bill would be the first step towards same-sex unions and access to gender reassignment surgery.
In November, Mariela Castro, director of the National Center for Sex Education, said her dad, Raul Castro, supports letting open gays serve in the military. Raul Castro was elevated to president after his brother Fidel's resignation in February after 49 years as the country's Communist ruler.
 Mariela Castro has said that she wants to "enrich the Cuban Revolution" with her fight for equality between the sexes and gay rights. The 45-year-old psychologist has been the director of the National Sex Education Centre since 2000.Recently, she has been campaigning in defense of LGBT rights in Cuba, a task she describes as difficult due to the patriarchal society she lives in. "I'm deeply sorry about what occurred in my country, about what occurred in the revolution, when the revolution has had a very strong orientation towards humanism," she said in 2007.
Sexual diversity was seen by Fidel Castro as a corrupt consequence of capitalism.
Homosexual sex was partially decriminalized in Cuba in 1979 and an equal age of consent was introduced in 1992. While social attitudes towards gay people are generally negative, the capital city Havana has a thriving gay scene but all gay rights organizations are banned. Under Fidel Castro many gay men suffered in Cuban labor camps as the regime attempted to ‘re-educate’ homosexuals. Gays were incarcerated in Military Units to Aid Production (UMAPs) between 1965 and 1968. Castro believed that hard work would rid the men of their "counter-revolutionary tendencies." The proposed change to Cuban family law would put members of same-sex unions on a par with heterosexuals. In January the Cuban culture minister Abel Preito gave public support to gay marriage. "I think that marriage between lesbians, between homosexuals can be perfectly approved and that in Cuba that wouldn't cause an earthquake or anything like that," said Prieto, who is also a member of the powerful Politburo of the Communist party and the Council of State, the nation's supreme governing body
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