Cuba Approves Same-Sex Marriage & Adoption Rights

In a referendum held on Sunday, September 25, the people of Cuba approved same-sex marriage and adoption rights by an overwhelming margin. According to reports, 66.9 percent of those who took part in the referendum said ‘yes’ to marriage equality and adoption rights for same-sex couples. From the Washington Blade:

Mariela Castro, the daughter of former President Raúl Castro who spearheads LGBTQ and intersex issues in Cuba as director of the country’s National Center for Sexual Education, is among those who support the new family code. 

“I voted yes for Cuban families, for a socialist Cuba, for the world’s most revolutionary and humanist family code, for a socialist state built upon rights and social justice that recognizes and protects all families,” said Mariela Castro after she voted.

The Cuban government in the years after the 1959 revolution that brought Mariela Castro’s uncle, Fidel Castro, to power, sent gay men and others to work camps. Cubans with AIDS were forcibly quarantined in state-run sanitaria until 1993.

In December 2018, a clause (known as Article 68) to the country’s new constitution which would have made same-sex marriage legal was jettisoned at the last minute prior to being voted on. Cuba joins Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Mexico City and several Mexican states that have extended marriage rights to same-sex couples. Read more at the Washington Blade. https://twitter.com/WashBlade/status/1574418424880570370