HAVANA (AP) — Cuba held a rare referendum Sunday on an unusually contentious regulation — a govt-backed “family law” code that would allow for exact same-intercourse partners to marry and adopt, as perfectly as outlining the legal rights of children and grandparents.
Cuba retains parliamentary elections each and every two a long time, although no occasion other than the Communist is authorized, but seldom has it held referendums on certain legislation.
And rarely has an officially backed evaluate met as significantly open criticism as the household regulation of extra than 400 articles, which has been questioned by quite a few customers of the island’s progressively vocal evangelical local community.
The sweeping code also would let surrogate pregnancies, broader legal rights for grandparents in regard to grandchildren, defense of the elderly and steps against gender violence.
President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who has promoted the regulation acknowledged resistance as he voted on Sunday.
“Most of our people will vote in favor of the code, but it nonetheless has troubles that our society as a total does not fully grasp,” he said.
Sixty-4-yr-old market vender Miguel Alberto Galindo mentioned he experienced voted for the measure: “It’s time that homosexuals have the exact rights as everybody else,” he mentioned.
But Alejandro Rodríguez, a 33-calendar year-old components store worker, mentioned he’d voted in opposition to the evaluate, expressing, “Some items in the code are good but others are poor.” He explained he did not concur with supplying gay partners the very same rights as “normal” families.
The evaluate was accredited by Cuba’s Parliament, the Countrywide Assembly, pursuing a thousands of federal government-arranged data periods this calendar year in neighborhoods throughout the region.
A significant supporter of the measure is Mariela Castro, director of the Nationwide Center for Sex Education and learning, a promoter of legal rights for similar-intercourse partners, daughter of previous President Raul Castro and niece of his brother Fidel.
But there’s a powerful strain of social conservatism in Cuba, where by evangelical churches have been expanding. Various religious leaders have expressed issue or opposition to the regulation., stressing it could weaken nuclear family members.
While Cuba was formally — and usually militantly — atheist for many years just after the 1959 revolution led by Fidel Castro — Raul’s brother — it has grow to be more tolerant of religions in excess of the past quarter century. That has intended a increased opening not only the after-dominant Roman Catholic Church, but also to Afro-Cuban religions, protestants and Muslims.
Some of people church buildings took benefit of the opening in 2018 and 2019 to campaign from a further plebiscite which would have rewritten the structure in a way to permit gay marriage.
The opposition was potent more than enough that the governing administration at that time backed away.
Cristiana Mesquita, The Associated Press
