Leonardo and his mothers Yohana Llanes (right) and Támara Amaral, at one of the May 2013 anti-homophobia events in Havana. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Jun 4 2013 (IPS)

Many lesbians and gays in Cuba find different ways of achieving their dream of becoming mothers and fathers and forming families. But this is complicated in a country where neither civil unions nor adoption by non-heterosexual persons are legally recognised.

“It is very hard…and even frustrating that I have no legal rights over my boy. I am not his biological father, but I’ve held him in my arms since his birth. There is nothing legal to define or protect our relationship,” said Junior del Toro, holding three-year-old Adrián on his lap.

Del Toro, a state company employee in Havana, and his partner decided to have a son “as an important part of family happiness” after 15 years of being in a relationship, he said. “We talked to different people until a woman friend of ours selflessly agreed to be part of helping us to have a child,” he said in an interview with IPS.

“My partner is the biological father and the mother shares in the child-raising with us. But I am the one who is most affected by the issue of rights, including in everyday life. For example, if the baby has to go to hospital and I am alone in dealing with the situation, I have no legal authority to decide anything about his illness,” he said, with visible distress.

Del Toro’s story is just one of many among the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, which has been waiting for years for the legislature to discuss draft reforms of the 1975 Family Code, which would recognise same-sex unions, for example.

This is the most recurrent demand among LGBT people in Cuba and would be the first step in giving recognition to other sexual rights, according to the state-run National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), which has been carrying out a systematic campaign to win respect for free sexual orientation and gender identity.

Every May since 2008 marks the high point of that drive: the Cuban Campaign against Homophobia. The schedule of activities is organised around May 17th, the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, and includes educational, academic and — for the first time this year — sports activities.

The Sixth National Campaign, which lasted throughout May, focused on the family, “because it is the space, along with the workplace, where the rights of LGBT persons are most violated,” according to CENESEX legal consultants. In the discussions that were part of the month’s events, one of the topics was this population group’s right to form families.

The question of non-heterosexuals adopting children “is a concern, although it is not one of the central concerns” brought to the attention of CENESEX experts, said Manuel Vázquez, a lawyer who oversees the institution’s legal consultation services.

However, Cuban activists are adding more demands as they wait for same-sex civil unions to be legalised and observe the progress that has been made on LGBT rights in other Latin American countries.

Argentina, Uruguay and the Mexican capital allow the adoption of children by same-sex married couples. But in the Caribbean, where homosexuality is punishable in a number of nations, only Aruba and the Netherlands Antilles recognise overseas adoptions.

In a May 12, 2012 joint statement, the Men for Diversity (HxD) organisation and CENESEX urged the Raúl Castro government to allow “all possibilities of union between same-sex couples, including marriage, as well as adoption and reproduction for homosexual persons.”

Dr. Alberto Roque, an activist who founded HxD, advocates the extension of assisted reproduction services to single women and lesbian couples in Cuba. “In these cases, the techniques for assisted reproduction used have a low degree of technological complexity, because it is not a case of infertile persons,” he said in a post on his blog, HOMOsapiens.

Lesbian groups such as Oremi in Havana; Las Isabelas in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba; Fénix in Cienfuegos; and Atenea, which was created this year in the central city of Ciego de Ávila, are discussing matters related to lesbian maternity and seeking mechanisms for raising awareness about the subject among the general public.

“Some women look for a man who is interested in being a father or a donor and they self-inseminate using crude methods, sometimes even endangering their health,” said psychologist Norma Guillard. “We should all have the right to have children, either our own or adopted,” she told IPS.

However, the issue of legalising adoption by homosexual couples is a controversial, taboo subject in Cuba, where “public displays of homosexuality” were penalised until the 1990s.

“I agree with homosexuals getting married, but not with them adopting children, who always suffer the trauma of social rejection. For me, the emotional stability of a child is more important than the right of an adult,” said Rosario F. in a post on the Café 108 interactive section of the IPS Cuba web site.

Activist Camilo García posted that “there is still a very deep-rooted prejudice that homosexual people are not capable of bringing up children as well as heterosexuals. People continue to view them as ‘sick,’ and believe they might pass on their ‘sickness’ to children,” he said.

“Most of us came from heterosexual families. If it was logical that homosexuality was something that you could catch or learn at home, we would have been like our parents. This argument is not viable, and it must be fought,” transvestite Riuber Alarcón told IPS.

A study by the Autonomous University of Yucatán in Mexico, published in 2011 by an online psychology magazine, Iztacala, found in a survey of 100 respondents between the ages of 18 and 63 that “this generation of young people displays more positive attitudes and beliefs toward adoption by same-sex couples.”

In Cuba, experts say that more studies are needed regarding same-sex couples and their families.

Marchers in a conga line ended four days of activities against homophobia in Ciego de Ávila, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
CIEGO DE ÁVILA, Cuba , May 20 2013 (IPS)

The lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community in Cuba has won advances on issues like the change of name of pre-operative transgender persons, while they continue to fight for the right to same-sex civil unions.

For the first time since 1997, a transsexual woman who had not undergone sex-change surgery was issued a photo ID card this year reflecting her chosen name and gender identity, Manuel Vázquez, a lawyer with the National Centre for Sex Education (CENESEX), a government-funded body, told IPS.

“We will continue supporting efforts to attain name changes in other cases, and we hope it will become the norm,” said Vázquez, who is head of the legal services unit in CENESEX, which reports that the family and the workplace are the spheres where the rights of LGBT persons are violated the most.

Up to now, the photo on the national ID card of trans women and men has had to reflect their biological sex.

In 1997, CENESEX managed to reach agreements with the ministries of the interior and justice to change the names and photos on the ID cards of 13 transgender people who had not undergone sex-reassignment surgery, although other civil registry documents, such as their birth certificates, were not modified. But that had not happened again until now.

Transgender people who have undergone sex-change surgery, which is provided free of charge in Cuba since 2008, are allowed to modify their ID cards. In Cuba, 19 people – two of them female-to-male transgender persons – have had sex-reassignment surgery so far, according to CENESEX.

“Now a trans person who has not had surgery is free to seek and win a name change, thanks to this precedent,” Vázquez said.

Speaking to IPS during the month-long events surrounding the International Day Against Homophobia, celebrated May 17, Adela Hernández, the only transgender member of a municipal assembly in Cuba, said she had started the process of applying for a name change on her ID card.

Hernández, a nurse and now a municipal assembly member in the city of Caibarién in the central province of Villa Clara, had to register as a candidate in the October-November 2012 municipal elections under the name José Agustín Hernández and with a photo that looks very different from the woman who won a majority of votes in her district.

Hernández is one of the special guests on this year’s agenda of educational, cultural and – for the first time – sports activities organised by CENESEX, which has led a month of anti-homophobia events every year since 2008.

On this occasion, the central activities took place May 14-17 in the city of Ciego de Ávila, 434 km east of Havana, ending with a festive march down the central avenue Libertad, with the demonstrators waving rainbow and Cuban flags and dancing in a conga line.

Mariela *, a 36-year-old mother, came to watch the conga line with her nine-year-old baby. “I haven’t taken part (in the activities), but I’m not against it,” she told IPS. “These events help families learn about sexual diversity and to respect it more, and help children and young people grow up better.”

But other people are still opposed to the campaign for respect for free sexual orientation and gender identity, which CENESEX carries out all year long, culminating in the May schedule of events, dedicated this year to families.

CENESEX director Mariela Castro said “the hardest thing is to change people’s mentalities,” in a country that is still heavily machista and homophobic. In fact, until the 1990s, “ostentatious public displays of homosexuality” were illegal.

Since 2012, the LGBT community and CENESEX have stepped up their activism demanding recognition of sexual rights as human rights in this country, which has no specific law against discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Cuban parliament has not yet debated the bill for a new “family code”, sponsored in 2008 by the non-governmental Federation of Cuban Women and other institutions. Among other things, the bill, aimed at updating the family code in effect since 1975, would recognise same-sex civil unions.

In Latin America, same-sex marriage is legal only in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as Mexico City and three states in Mexico. In Brazil, meanwhile, civil unions that confer nearly the same rights as marriage are legal, and on May 14, the National Council of Justice ordered civil registries to allow same-sex couples who apply for a marriage license to marry.

Vázquez called for a law on civil unions in Cuba, and said he supported the creation of a law on gender identity, as advocated by legal experts and activists.

But until such legislation is approved, the 26-year-old lawyer’s strategy is to train attorneys and judges on how to take advantage of existing laws in cases of violations of LGBT rights

“People also have to be brave, and report these crimes,” he said.

He mentioned the first workshop on the question of LGBT rights for lawyers and judges, held in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba. CENESEX also plans to expand its legal services to other parts of the country.

“There is no law on the rights of homosexuals. There is only very vague language about it,” said Raquel Fernández of the Red de Lesbianas Atenea, a network of lesbians based in Ciego de Ávila. Domestic violence and limited access to housing or jobs due to homophobia are among the limitations that lesbians suffer the most, she told IPS.

*The source asked that her last name not be used.