Minister of Justice
will have last say on Cuban same-sex marriage
By
Marta María Ramírez
A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann.
The decision to green-light
same-sex unions “is up to the Minister of Justice”, according to Mariela
Castro Espín, director of the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX).
“We’ll keep fighting to get an answer soon”, the sexologist said during
the celebrations for the 10th anniversary of the TransCuba Group.
Legalization of same-sex marriage is one of the reforms CENESEX has been
striving to include in Cuba’s new Family Code since 2007.
The issue came to the fore again recently when former CENESEX staff
member Wendy Iriepa, a transgender woman who had a sex-change operation
in 2007, married a gay man who is against the Center’s activity.
Iriepa quit her job as health assistant on July 7, citing “differences”
with Mariela Castro regarding her new fiancé. She had decided to undergo
sex-reassignment surgery a year before the Cuban Ministry of Public
Health passed Resolution 126 declaring such service legal and free of
charge. In early 2011, she got a whole new set of identity documents.
“I always thought the wedding of a transsexual these days would give us
all an opportunity to celebrate TransCuba’s achievement together, but
Wendy took that right away from us. I hope Cuban society understands
that not all transgender people are the same,” Marifí Herández Lugo
remarked.
CENESEX Director Castro Espín, in turn, admitted to be “very happy that
she can get married with a man who seems to be the love of her life,
even if he’s not exactly the straight man she expected to find. We wish
her all the best, because we have worked very hard for our women’s
happiness.”
In response to journalists who asked about the likely politicization of
a wedding where the dissident blogger Yoani Sánchez and her husband
acted at witnesses, the sexologist pointed out: “The U.S. government
provides funds for LGBT groups opposed to what we do at CENESEX and
smear campaigns against Cuba, and some people fall for it. They just
don’t like CENESEX’s success”.
Since 1988, as a result of the Center’s efforts, 16 genital modification
operations have been conducted and 3 sets of completely new IDs have
been issued, out of 31 requests Cuban transsexuals have submitted to the
National Commission for Transgender People’s Affairs.
The first wedding of a Cuban transsexual took place in the late 1980s,
after doctors in the Island performed a successful operation on Mavi
Susset, who has been married twice since then.
CENESEX has championed a widespread campaign to raise political
awareness of, and gain respect for, people’s free sexual orientation and
gender identity.
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Uniones de parejas homosexuales cubanas,
La
aprobación de las uniones entre personas del mismo sexo
“está en manos de la ministra de Justicia”, aseguró la
directora del Centro Nacional de Educación Sexual (CENESEX),
Mariela Castro Espín.
Sección Diversidad
Sexual
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