[Marxism] Gay Liberation and the Cuban Revolution Today

["Walter Lippmann" <walterlx@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

GAY LIBERATION AND THE CUBAN REVOLUTION TODAY
by Walter Lippmann, Moderator, CubaNews list
April 20, 2004

Having been active in defense of the Cuban Revolution since
1961, and having learned something about the importance of
gay rights and liberation struggles in the overall process
of securing a better world, it's important to look at these
things and retain a sense of proportion. This isn't a
complete discussion of this topic, which would require a
book. It is a reply to an internet discussion article
linked below.

Gay rights, as important as it is, is NOT the central
question facing humanity, as some people stubbornly,
obsessively believe. Not that gays should wait, but for a
white gay male in the United States to require that every
struggle by every gay person be viewed as equal to that of
every other struggle is absurd. To suggest that LGBT people
are better off in Miami, Los Angeles or San Francisco, then
in Cuba, it to look at things via a completely homocentric
outlook. No one can be objective, or call themselves a
Marxist, if they use such a framework.

Homophobia exists in every society on the planet, and that
would include Los Angeles, San Francisco and, of course,
Cuba, which is a third-world country. O'Brien has never
visited Cuba and knows nothing about Cubans, but he peddles
disinformation about Cuba deliberately.

Jon Hillson's opinions, which I often rejected, didn't keep
him from writing an outstanding essay about Cuba and gays
in the form of a long essay about the use and abuse of the
politics of Reinaldo Arenas through the movie BEFORE NIGHT
FALLS. No serious person can study the history of gays in
Cuba without carefully looking at that essay:
http://www.blythe.org/arenas.html

There is now a vast literature on gays in Cuba and a lot of
it has been published inside Cuba itself which makes it
clear that the institutionalized homophobia which certainly
did exist in the past was discarded a long time ago. At the
recent book fair in Havana, one I attended and which since
then has traveled all over the island, a range of new Cuban
books were published, dealing with intimate personal family
and sexual topic. In the book SEXUALITY IN THE SUNSET OF
LIFE, there's a whole section on gays, lesbians and
sexuality which is completely positive and accepting in
tone. Check it:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/23970

Maria Espin Castro, whose father is Raul Castro and whose
mother is Vilma Espin, heads the Cuban national sex
education center, CENESEX. She recently gave a long
interview on gays in Cuba which was first published in ALMA
MATER, the magazine of the University of Havana, and which
was translated and reprinted on the CubaNews list and later
on in THE MILITANT and GREEN LEFT WEEKLY:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/20624

-------------------------------------------------------
Two of Castro's most interesting paragraphs from this
interview, printed in full below, answer this question:

"How do you think our laws can better reflect respect for
the rights of homosexuals?

"The Constitution of the Republic protects all people,
regardless of their race, sex or age. Obviously, this
protection includes homosexuals, albeit not explicitly
(when something like that is made explicit, it is official
recognition that there is a need to avoid any type of
discrimination, like racism or sexism).

"In my opinion, some day, when plans are made to revise the
constitution, I believe it should very explicitly include
"sexual orientation", in the same way that it includes
race, gender, and other considerations. I don't consider
this to be an urgent matter, but I do believe we should be
clearer about this in our laws, more evident, not only to
protect against discrimination against these people in
public institutions but also in the space of the family,
because it is often there that a homosexual is first
insulted or rejected."
------------------------------------------------------

Australia's GREEN LEFT WEEKLY recently ran an exchange on
gays in Cuba last month, in March 2004:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/23916

Karen Lee Wald, who has spent thirty years working in and
out of Cuba in its defense, adds this comment:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/23923

Cuba's official GRANMA newspaper has pointed out the
hypocrisy of Bush and company in making a campaign issue of
anti-gay prejudice in the US constitution:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/23639

In December 2003, JUVENTUD REBELDE ran a long and entirely
sympathetic answer to a letter from a gay male reader in
its sexual advice column:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/22787

On New Year's Day in Havana this year I watched while a
drag queen performed on the streets of the gritty
neighborhood of Central Havana. The cops drove by and did
nothing. I posted a short note about that here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/22768

A raft of articles on gays in Cuba can be found at the
website of THE GULLY, which describes itself this way:

"The Gully online magazine and The Gully en español are
unique forums for the global lgbt community.

"Our mission: to offer queer views on everything from the
Iraq war and human rights in Guatemala to same-sex marriage
and World Cup soccer, provoking both new ideas and new
activists.

"The Gully is the main project of the nonprofit Homocom
Corporation, and relies, in large part, on tax-deductible
donations from individual readers like you."
http://www.thegully.com/essays/cuba/completecuba.html

Gay film-maker Phil Tarley shared his recollections of a
recent visit to the island, including a stay at the casa
particular of gay artists Samuel Weinstein and his
boyfriend Alberto (sorry, I forgot his last name) late last
fall in a December 2003 essay published here:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/22709

World AIDS day was celebrated as always December 1 in Cuba:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/22353

Pedro Juan Gutierrez wrote an essay NEITHER SIN NOR
ABSOLUTION, published in HABANERA, the magazine of the
Cuban Institute for Friendship with the Peoples (ICAP)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/21076

Vilma Espin, President of the Federation of Cuban Woman was
asked about discrimination against gays in Cuba and was
quoted on that in THE MILITANT this way:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/19391

Maria Espin Castro, whose father is Raul Castro and whose
mother is Vilma Espin, heads the Cuban national sex
education organization, CENESEX. She gave a long interview
on gays in Cuba which was first published in ALMA MATER,
the magazine of the University of Havana, and which was
translated and reprinted on the CubaNews list and later on
in THE MILITANT and GREEN LEFT WEEKLY:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/20624

Pablo Milanes, the Cuban singer who lives and works in Cuba
and travels to work and sing everywhere, takes up gay
issues in his concerts and in the famous pro-gay song
called two bodies. Here's an article on that which even got
into the ultra-reactionary EL NUEVO HERALD:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/20543

Joel del Rio, film critic for JUVENTUD REBELDE wrote about
gays in Cuban art, which we had translated for the CubaNews
list and which you can read at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews/message/20228

I've not written here about the film STRAWBERRY AND
CHOCOLATE, of which many are familiar. Less may know of the
film VIDEO DE FAMILIA, a coming-out film which focuses on
the reaction, the denial, and the dawning beginning of
understanding in a Cuban family whose son left the island
so he could live an open gay life in Miami. This movie
played commercially on the island and was toured
internationally. I'm not writing about movies such as
BUTTERFLIES ON THE SCAFFOLD, which tells of a community
theater in Havana where drag queens perform publicly. Nor
the movie GAY CUBA, nor books like Ian Lumsden's MACHOS,
MARICONES AND GAYS, a very critical but factually-objective
book on this subject. Those with an open mind will look at
some of these to get a fuller, more founded impression.

Coming out simply isn't the same issue in Cuba as it is
in the United States. Cuba could, in my opinion, do well
if it had an organization such as Parents, Families and
Friends of Lesbians and Gays, to work to educate and to
fight prejudice in social and personal life in Cuba, but
beyond that, how LGBT people organized for their rights
is more of a matter for them to decide.

Discussion of gender issues beyond those of the directly
LGBT world are also developing widely in the Cuban media
and academia. I haven't time or space to detail these
matters here, but here are just a few revealing links:

TV opens up discussion on taboo subject - homosexuality
http://www.oneworld.org/ips2/apr98/17_39_070.html

Homosexuality takes a step out of the closet
http://www.aegis.com/news/ips/2003/IP030813.html

Guaranteeing treatment for HIV-AIDS patients [Cuba has the
lowest HIV-AIDS rate on the planet]
http://www.aegis.com/news/ips/2001/IP010635.html

As I said before, Cuba's no paradise for gays or anyone
else, but to focus exclusively on Cuba today completely
ignoring the many changes which have happened since the
institutionalized discrimination which occurred in the late
sixties and early seventies, is to deny reality.

Facts are of no interest to those whose obsessive and
irreconcilable hostility toward the Cuban Revolution is
boundless. Mere facts are of no interest to such people who
refuse to listen and therefore cannot see. But they do help
those in the United States and its propaganda apparatus who
are working hard to maintain and increase
anti-revolutionary propaganda about Cuba.

Walter Lippmann

MY COMMENTS ABOVE ARE IN PARTIAL RESPONSE TO JOHN O'BRIEN:
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/marxism/2004w15/msg00152.htm
================================================

INTERVIEW WITH MARIELA CASTRO ESPIN of CENESEX

CUBA: Gay rights: how much has changed?

In this interview by Eduardo Jimanez Garcia, which first
appeared in Alma Mater, the journal of the University of
Havana, Mariela Castro Espin, the director of the Cuban
National Institute for Sex Education (CENESEX), advocates
an amendment to the Cuban constitution to add homosexuality
to the groups against which discrimination is expressly
outlawed.

Achieving dignity and respect for the rights of Cuban
homosexuals is no easy task. Yet, it hardly seems humane to
wait another century for some sort of "natural evolution"
to bring about justice. The full emancipation of gays and
lesbians in Cuba entails promoting and achieving changes in
the imagination of a society that does not yet accept
homosexuality, despite the fact it is more relaxed than
before about the existence of this "phenomenon".

Do you believe that the 1990s ushered in an era of greater
social tolerance with respect to homosexuality in Cuba?

Yes, I believe that people are a little more relaxed about
a homosexual presence, both in public and in the privacy of
the family, but only a little bit relaxed, not more
tolerant. We have much more work to do in our society for
this "relaxation" to mean real respect towards sexual
diversity. That is why we must be very careful about how we
try to achieve this.

I do not have statistics or other kinds of scientific data
to prove that there is more tolerance, because there are no
studies on this specific subject in our country. Yet, I can
be an observer of this phenomenon as a professional and as
an individual. I do believe that since the 1990s there is
greater acceptance of the presence of homosexuals by some
portion of the population and public institutions. That
does not mean that the contradiction has been resolved for
all individuals at all levels of society.

I think we are at a good moment to implement policies that
are more explicit about the defence of the human rights of
homosexuals, so that we are better prepared to confront any
manifestation of discrimination on the grounds of sexual
orientation.

By the 1970s, reforms to the penal code excluded the
classification of homosexuals as a criminals [because of
their sexual orientation]; any word that discriminated
against homosexuals was modified. However, that is not
enough because I think our laws should better reflect the
respect that homosexuals deserve.

Greater and more professional work is needed at the
microsocial level, because what this is about is trying to
change perceptions, modifying the social imagination. I see
this very humanistic attempt to achieve greater respect for
the rights of homosexuals as the waging of a battle of
ideas in our society. I believe this notion has to be part
of the cultural and political battle because that would
mean a cultural, social and political strengthening for the
Cuban Revolution.

Is that a proposal?

Yes. It is a proposal I am making from my position of
responsibility as the director of the CENESEX. I assure you
it has been heard by receptive listeners. My proposal is in
no way removed or distant from the spirit of the
Revolution, or from the entire process that has brought
about this call to a battle of ideas.

It would be wonderful to be able to spark meaningful,
inter-group discussion on this subject, so that Cuban
society could develop a healthier culture of sexuality, one
that is fairer, that helps to erode old, erroneous beliefs
and prejudices that emphasize sexual orientation.

Something like this would put the revolution even more in
line with its humanistic ethic; the Cuban Revolution has
been possible because of the participation of all men and
women, of all Cubans who have identified with the conquests
and dreams of that social project. Among all those who have
participated there are also people of diverse sexual
orientations. Thus, it would not be just for homosexuals to
be denied respect because of some ancestral taboos. This is
why I believe that we have much more work to do.

How do you think our laws can better reflect respect for
the rights of homosexuals?

The Constitution of the Republic protects all people,
regardless of their race, sex or age. Obviously, this
protection includes homosexuals, albeit not explicitly
(when something like that is made explicit, it is official
recognition that there is a need to avoid any type of
discrimination, like racism or sexism).

In my opinion, some day, when plans are made to revise the
constitution, I believe it should very explicitly include
"sexual orientation", in the same way that it includes
race, gender, and other considerations. I don't consider
this to be an urgent matter, but I do believe we should be
clearer about this in our laws, more evident, not only to
protect against discrimination against these people in
public institutions but also in the space of the family,
because it is often there that a homosexual is first
insulted or rejected.

To be rejected by your own family is one of the most
personally and emotionally destructive experiences a person
can have, even more so when the condition that caused the
rejection, sexual orientation, was not a matter of personal
choice.

Why do you think the gay community in Cuba has not
organised itself, as it has in other countries, to demand,
among other things, greater space and respect at a social
level?

I think the greatest difficulty is that there is no
unifying and convincing project, because male and female
homosexuals are as heterogeneous as heterosexuals. Yet, I
don't see this as an obstacle; I see it as a complicated
reality. It is also true that one should be able to count
on support from the rest of Cuban civil society, a society
permeated with sexual prejudices.

But I think gays and lesbians should try a strategy of
greater integration into social spaces rather than
organise, because if they "organise", this could bring
about a period of self-segregation, of isolation, and not
greater social inclusion and a naturalisation of their
sexual orientation in Cuban society.

I believe that male and female homosexuals should
participate more in different loci of social and political
discussion, despite the prejudices, so they can make their
truth, their real need for equality, their beliefs known,
in order to gain support from the scientific community, and
in that way bring to bear arguments that can effect the
changes that are necessary in society - and see that they
are just. I think such a strategy would be more effective
and healthier, too.

I believe we are now poised at a very opportune moment in
which people with a homosexual orientation can be better
understood and integrated into different places of our
society.

[This article was translated by ABC Language Solutions,
http://www.abclanguagesolutions.com . 
For more information about Cuba:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CubaNews

>From Green Left Weekly, March 3, 2004. Visit the Green Left
Weekly home page



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