Cuba's new Family Code won't pink wash away the communist regime's ideological aversion to homosexuality

“We would never come to believe that a homosexual could embody the conditions and requirements of conduct that would enable us to consider him a true revolutionary, a true communist militant.” ... A deviation of that nature clashes with the concept we have of what a militant communist should be.” - Fidel Castro, 1965
 

The Castro regime held a "referendum" on September 25, 2022 to pass a government-backed “family code" that would allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt. It also outlined the rights of children and grandparents. The new "family law" contains over 400 articles. Critics view it as an exercise in pink washing.

First, this is not a free and fair referendum. There have not been free elections in Cuba for 72 years. Last ones were in 1950. Batista's 1952 coup ended regular free and fair elections. The Castros promised to restore them in 1959, but no free or fair elections were held over the next 63 years. Opposition political parties, and independent civil society were and continue to be outlawed.

Proof of life: Raul Castro featured in official media going to vote.

What the Castro dictatorship calls a "referendum" has some peculiar characteristics.  Can't campaign for the position opposed by the government. No equal time in the public airwaves. This is a "vote" where a single option, the one advocated by the government, is permitted. Efforts to independently monitor voting at precincts to verify the official tally will get you harassed and shutdown by secret police. 

Pinkwashing is "the practice of presenting something, particularly a state, as gay-friendly in order to soften or downplay aspects of its reputation considered negative."

This is particularly ironic in the Cuban context with the current communist dictatorship.

The Cuban government’s leadership, who remain in power today, carried out anti-Gay draconian policies in the past, and they are the same ones now advocating for the change on gay marriage in the new family code.

There is a deep-seated homophobia at the heart of communist ideology that viewed homosexuality as a symptom of bourgeois or capitalist contamination. This resulted in the systematic repression of homosexuals in communist regimes such as China, Cuba, and the Soviet Union.

In the Soviet Union homosexuality was criminalized in 1933, "punishable by prison and hard labor, and Stalinist anti-gay policies persisted throughout the 1960s and 1970s." 

In 1949 upon taking power in Mainland China the communists declared homosexuality a symptom of "bourgeois decadence" and set out to eliminate it.

On March 13, 1963 Fidel Castro gave a speech were he openly attacked “long-haired layabouts, the children of bourgeois families,” roaming the streets wearing “trousers that are too tight,” carrying guitars to look like Elvis Presley, who took “their licentious behavior to the extreme” of organizing “effeminate shows” in public places. 

The Cuban dictator warned: “They should not confuse the Revolution’s serenity and tranquility with weaknesses in the Revolution. Our society cannot accept these degeneracies.”

It didn't take long for the crackdown.

Gays and Lesbians were gathered up and placed in forced labor camps beginning in 1964 in what they called Military Units to Aid Production or UMAPs (Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción). These forced labor camps were for those suspected of or found guilty of "improper conduct."  Persons with "effeminate mannerisms": what the Cuban government called "extravagant behavior" were taken to these camps. 

On March 21, 1984 the film "Mauvaise Conduite" was released in France. The film was directed by  Néstor Almendros and Orlando Jiménez Leal.  The title of the film in English is Improper Conduct. It examines the "moral purges" of the Castro regime that began in 1964 with  the UMAPs.

Twenty years later with the outbreak of the AIDS epidemic in Cuba the regime rounded up all who were HIV positive. Cuba is the only nation in the world that mandated universal HIV testing and enforced isolation of all virus carriers in detention facilities from 1986 to 1994. 

Mariela Castro, General Raul Castro's daughter, has led efforts to Pinkwash the Castro dictatorship. Saul Landau, a Castro apologist who passed away in 2013, worked on a project that highlighted her efforts, Mariela Castro's March: Cuba's LGBT Revolution.

Gay Pride ended violently by Castro regime in 2019.

The reality that all human rights are nonexistent in Cuba was underscored once more on May 11, 2019 when the hollowness of the Pinkwashing  was revealed with images of gay rights activists beaten down, arrested and taken away for carrying out their annual Gay Pride march in Havana. The Castro regime had arbitrarily decided there would not be one in 2019.

The hatred for Gay dissidents in Cuba by the dictatorship has been documented in the case of Cuban biologist and environmentalist Dr. Ariel Ruiz Urquiola. On November 27, 2019 in a conference hosted by the International Society for Human Rights Dr. Ruiz Urquiola publicly accused the Cuban government of purposely inoculating him with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). He addressed the UN Human Rights Council on July 3, 2020 and denounced this cruel and unusual treatment by the Cuban government. On July 12, 2022 a video was released with Professor Ruiz Urquiola demonstrating the evidence that he was injected with HIV by agents of the Cuban government.

Cuba's new Family Code is an attempt to recover on the propaganda front what was lost in 2019, but the underlying nature of the dictatorship remains the same.

Anatomy of a coup in Venezuela: Nicolas Maduro is an usurper

Usurper (noun): a person who takes a position of power or importance illegally or by force.

Nicolás Maduro is an usurper who has carried out a coup against Venezuelan democracy

Diego Zambrano in the Lawfare blog has outlined the constitutional validity of the presidency of Juan Guaidó and the illegitimacy of Nicolas Maduro who is an usurper. It is Maduro who has carried out a slow motion coup undermining Venezuelan democracy.

"The present Venezuelan crisis began on Jan. 10, when Maduro was sworn in for a second term scheduled to end in 2025. Nobody seems to dispute that his first term ended that day, in accordance with Articles 230 and 231 of the Venezuelan Constitution. The relevant question is whether Maduro was in fact reelected and legally president after Jan. 10.

Any plausible reading of the constitution shows that Maduro was not reelected and, indeed, that there has been no election at all for the term beginning Jan. 10. Article 293 governs the process for calling and organizing new presidential elections, delegating to the National Electoral Council control over the process. Members of that body are nominated through a complicated scheme that gives significant power to the National Assembly, the country’s unicameral legislature, under Article 296. To Maduro’s chagrin, however, the National Assembly has been under opposition control since 2015.

In an attempt to circumvent the National Assembly, Maduro created a parallel legislature under Articles 347 and 348. These provisions, however, were meant solely to call for a constitutional convention and required a national referendum (like the one in 1999). Knowing that a popular vote would defeat his proposal, Maduro concocted an “electoral” process that would ensure every member of that alternate assembly would be under his control. That entire process was outside of the constitutional structure and violated the procedures prescribed by Article 347 and Venezuelan law. Under any sensible reading of the constitution, there was no basis for a parallel legislature nor the process by which it was staffed.

Here’s the key connection between that parallel body and the Venezuelan presidential elections: In 2018, the unconstitutional assembly called for, and organized, a presidential election—in direct violation of the constitution. The alternate assembly sidelined the actual National Assembly’s role, staffed the National Electoral Council with Maduro loyalists, and ensured another “election” that would keep Maduro in power."

Undermined election, packed court to gut powers of National Assembly  2015
On December 1, 2015 on his weekly television show Nicolas Maduro spoke clearly on how he would respond to an opposition victory in the legislative elections: "I will never allow this to happen, ever. I would go out on the streets and fight side by side with the people." Even if he were to lose in the elections Maduro declared: "Were we to lose, which I find unimaginable, I will govern with the people in a civilian-military alliance."

Maduro lost the vote, but the opposition had to defend the results.

Venezuela is not a democracy, but a country where contested elections are held within an anti-democratic regime. This has meant that the opposition had to take to the street to ensure that the vote be respected on and following the December 6, 2015 election. There are prisoners of conscience today in Venezuela and the democratic opposition is demanding their release in an amnesty before Christmas which Maduro rejected. 

Bolivarian National Guard firing at protesters in Venezuela

Furthermore the Maduro regime packed the Supreme Court and used the court to undo the results of the National Assembly elections by challenging the results in 22 races. By denying the opposition its super majority it opens the path to gutting the National Assembly's powers replacing it with a newly created and un-elected communal congress. 

Maduro took things a step further using the supreme court to strip the National Assembly of the power over the Central Bank and leaving it firmly in the executive, i.e. Maduro's hands. 

Illegally suspended a recall referendum
On October 20, 2016 Nicolas Maduro illegally suspended a recall referendum because the dictatorship knew that it could not obtain a favorable result.  

Military snipers targeted and killed protesters on Sunday in Venezuela

Created an alternative to the National Assembly with a fraudulent vote (2017)
The so-called vote for a Constituent Assembly on July 30, 2017 was to do away with the last vestiges of the old democratic order following the Cuban Stalinist model as the end goal. This is why it was so profoundly unpopular.  Despite threats of reprisals from the Maduro regime for those who did not go out to vote only 12.4% of Venezuelan voters took part in the sham election and 87.6% abstained from taking part in it.

The Maduro regime's election officials claimed that 8.1 million voted in their sham election, but Smartmatic, the company that provided the voting machines issued a statement that the turnout numbers had been tampered with.

The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) condemned "the new measures taken by the Government of Venezuela to prevent the exercise of the right to freedom of expression, freedom of the press, and to prohibit the exercise of the right to protest and peaceful assembly in the context of the electoral process convened on July 30, 2017 for the National Constituent Assembly."

Venezuela's Presidential election: If you don't vote for Nicolas Maduro, you don't eat. (2018)

Ration cards were issued for food in a country were mass hunger is an ever present reality and it is understood by many that following regime instructions, such as going to vote in a sham election, is necessary to be eligible for rations. The Maduro regime has continued, the process started under Hugo Chavez, of taking over sectors of the economy. The electoral calculus is clear: "Everyone who has this card must vote," said Nicolas Maduro and continued, "I give and you give." This is part of the reason why the international community refused to recognize the May 20, 2018 election. It was called early by Maduro, and did not respect international norms.

Maduro rally of government officials in May of 2018

Foreign power interfering in Venezuela's internal affairs for decades.
Caracas Chronicles is right when it observes: "Amazing how everything the left accuses the U.S. of wanting to do in Venezuela —siphon off oil wealth, install a puppet dictator, run hundreds of spies, crush democratic institutions— is stuff Cuba is *actually* doing. And has been. For years."

Thousands of Cuban military advisers and intelligence officials assisted the Chavez and Maduro regime's consolidate power to first form and then entrench the dictatorship in Venezuela. OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro correctly describes it as "being like an occupation army."

The Castro regime's personnel have been training the military, security services and pro-regime militias in tactics and strategies to terrorize and repress the citizenry in Venezuela. Many young Venezuelans have paid the ultimate price for standing up for freedom in their homeland. 

Ramiro Valdez, the Cuban official who constructed the police state in Cuba with the help of the East German Stasi and Soviet KGB, has spent a lot of time in Venezuela installing the police state there.

Nicolas Maduro with his Cuban handlers has undermined the National Assembly, stacking the supreme court, creating an anti-democratic parallel assembly while centralizing all power in the executive, and outlawing freedom of assembly, speech and association. Maduro's regime has invited Russian mercenaries to protect him in Venezuela.  Reports indicate that their are 2,000 Russian nationals working in intelligence roles and reporting to the Ministry of Defense.

Castro regime's Ramiro Valdez with Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro

What we are witnessing today are the last elements of Venezuelan democracy found in the National Assembly seeking to mobilize itself and the country around the constitution and the rule of law to defend itself from Nicolas Maduro, the Venezuelan tyrant backed by Cuba, Russia, Mainland China, North Korea, Turkey, and Nicaragua.

 

Christian Liberation Movement Statement: "Support popular sovereignty for Cubans"

Neither the state nor the market can dominate society, or be above the people's decisions, and the freedom and dignity of persons. - Oswaldo Payá

 

The democratic proposal that we defend contemplates that economic activity is based on the integral development of persons, families and the common good.

Cuba is living for over half a century the same totalitarian dictatorship that maintains absolute power over the lives of every citizen and it is willing to imprison, to suppress and even kill those who oppose them. This and no other is the problem that causes the suffering of the Cuban people today.

The U.S. embargo and the relations between Cuba and the United States are part of a dispute between nations. Given its origin, it should be resolved in the context of an overall solution, where governments with an authentic and popular democratic mandate participate. Neither the perpetuity or softening or removal of the embargo should be considered the solution for the people of Cuba, because it does not depend on the action of the people, nor is the problem. 

 It tends to confuse, is illusory and unreal to consider that the so-called "sole proprietors" form a "broad spectrum of civil society." The laws of our country do not recognize rights and economic freedoms that guarantee the functioning of a free market economy. In Cuba, the totalitarian regime has granted concessions within an environment and legal system under the absolute control of the government. To support and cheer this logic of no rights is an act of complicity that is an assault precisely against the possible emergence of a real "civil society."

We ask for solidarity with the legitimate right of every Cuban to live in their homeland in an environment where the law is born of a consulted consensus ensuring free enterprise and free political choice. We do not ask for the isolation of our fellow compatriots as a way to achieve freedom and rights for the people of Cuba . Quite the contrary, we want the same freedom enjoyed by free peoples, not partial freedom, not “China” style freedom. God gives it complete.

We invite not only the Obama administration, but all democratic governments, all institutions and all people of good will in the world who are sympathetic to the cause of freedom for Cuba to join the campaign of legitimate claims the Cuban people demand.

We invite you, because it is ethical and legitimate, because it is democratic and sovereign, because it is just and legal.

We invite you, because giving voice to the people is the essence of democracy and the consistent thing to do. It is going to the root of the problem.

We invite you to demand, along with many Cubans, that the people be consulted in a REFERENDUM. That is our choice. We count on the support of all to support the right of Cubans to the free exercise of popular sovereignty.

Coordinating Council

Christian Liberation Movement

May 20, 2014 .

Original text in Spanish here.