Cuba to legalise gay marriage in new family code draft

Havana: Cuba on Wednesday published a long-awaited draft of a new family code that would unlock the gateway to gay marriage if passed, in a move that cautiously applauded LGBT rights activists for remaining cautious or actually implementing it.

The new code describes marriage as the "voluntary union of two people" without defining gender, instead of the current description as the "union of a man and a woman."

However, the concept still needs to go to a grassroots debate, and it will then be amended to take into account the views of the citizens before going to a referendum. Activists fear that the commission charged with it could fall back among religious groups and those who prefer the traditional machismo culture. They say the government should not have decided on a referendum on fundamental human rights. The administration states it desires to build rather than enforce approval of the change. In 2018, the government chose to invalidate an amendment to the new constitution of Cuba that would have opened the door for same-sex unions after the campaign by evangelical churches. "The blueprint for the family code is all one could hope for," said Maykel Gonzalez Vivero, director of Tremenda Note, a digital magazine focusing on women, the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) community and the Blacks. community.

"It took a long time and there was no transparency in the endless process of almost 15 years. But it is there."

Cuba, which sent homosexuals into correctional labor camps in the early years after its leftist revolution, made significant progress in LGBT rights in the 2000s and 2010s, despite the widespread persistence of machismo.

The island nation has instituted the right to free sex change operations, banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and held annual marches against homophobia - Cuba's equivalent of gay pride.

However, many members of the LGBT community say they have been frustrated in recent years by a slowdown in pace while a handful of other Latin American countries have gone ahead with the approval of gay marriage.