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.

New Zealand has become the 13th country in the world and the first in the Asia-Pacific region to legalise same-sex marriage.

Lawmakers voted 77 to 44 in favour of the gay-marriage bill on its third and final reading on Wednesday night.

People watching from the public gallery and some lawmakers immediately broke into song after the result was announced, singing the New Zealand love song “Pokarekare Ana” in the indigenous Maori language.

“For us, we can now feel equal to everyone else,” said Tania Penafiel Bermudez, a bank teller who said she already considers herself married to partner Sonja Fry but now can get a certificate to prove it. “This means we can feel safe and fair and right in calling each other wife and wife.”

In one of several speeches that ended in a standing ovation, bill sponsor Louisa Wall told lawmakers the change was “our road toward healing”.

“In our society, the meaning of marriage is universal – it’s a declaration of love and commitment to a special person,” she said. She added that “nothing could make me more proud to be a New Zealander than passing this bill.”

Lawmakers from most political parties were encouraged by their leaders to vote as their conscience dictated rather than along party lines. Although Wall is from the opposition Labour Party, the bill also was supported by John Key, the centre-right prime minister.

“In my view, marriage is a very personal thing between two individuals,” Key said. “And, in the end, this is part of equality in modern-day New Zealand.”

Since 2005, New Zealand has allowed civil unions, which confer many legal rights on gay couples. The new law will allow same sex couples to jointly adopt children for the first time and will also allow their marriages to be recognised in other countries. It will take effect in late August.

“This is really, really huge,” said Jills Angus Burney, a lawyer who drove about 90 minutes to parliament to watch the vote with her partner, Deborah Hambly, who had flown in from farther afield. “It’s really important to me. It’s just unbelievable.”

Burney, a Presbyterian, said she and Hambly want to celebrate with a big, traditional wedding as soon as possible.

Pressure on neighbours

The change in New Zealand could put pressure on some of its neighbours to consider changing their laws. In Australia, there has been little political momentum for a change at a federal level and Prime Minister Julia Gillard has expressed her opposition to same-sex marriage. Some Australian states, however, are considering gay-marriage legislation.

Rodney Croome, the national director for the lobbying group Australian Marriage Equality, said that since Friday, 1,000 people had signed an online survey saying they would travel to New Zealand to wed, though same-sex marriages would not be recognised under current Australian law.

“There’s this really big, pent-up demand for this in Australia,” Croome said. “New Zealand is just a three-hour plane ride away, and many couples are going to go to New Zealand to marry. They are just so sick and tired of waiting for the government to act. I think it’s going to spark this big tourism boom.”

Opposition

Many people in New Zealand remain vehemently opposed to gay marriage. The lobbying group Family First last year presented a petition to parliament signed by 50,000 people who opposed the bill. Another 25,000 people have since added their signatures to that petition.

“Historically and culturally, marriage is about man and a woman, and it shouldn’t be touched,” said Family First founder Bob McCoskrie. “It doesn’t need to be.”

McCoskrie said same-sex marriage should have been put to a public referendum rather than a parliamentary vote. That might not have changed the outcome, however: Surveys indicate that about two-thirds of New Zealanders favour gay marriage.

The change was given impetus last May when U.S. President Barack Obama declared his support for gay marriage. That prompted Prime Minister Key to break his silence on the issue by saying he was “not personally opposed” to the idea. Wall then put forward the bill, which she had previously drafted.

Same-sex marriage is recognised in the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada, South Africa, Norway, Sweden, Portugal, Iceland, Argentina and Denmark.

Lawmakers in Uruguay approved a law last week that President José Mujica is expected to sign. Nine states in the U.S. also recognise such marriages, but the federal government does not.

In his speech before Wednesday’s vote, lawmaker Tau Henare extended a greeting to people of all sexual identities and concluded with a traditional greeting in Maori.

“My message to you all is, ‘Welcome to the mainstream,'” Henare said. “Do well. Kia Ora.”

*Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.

Still from TV spot in favour of equal marriage. Credit: Colectivo Ovejas Negras

By Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 11 2013 (IPS)

Activists in Uruguay hope the passage of the “Equal Marriage Law” Wednesday will help bring about recognition that society is heterogeneous.

The law approved by the Uruguayan Congress modifies the civil code and recognises the marriage of two people of any gender identity or sexual orientation.

This small country wedged between South America’s two giants, Argentina and Brazil, has thus become the second nation in Latin America, after Argentina, to adopt same-sex marriage.

The law, approved by 71 of the 92 lower house lawmakers present for the vote – out of a total of 99 – represents “the cornerstone of a change in our society’s perspective,” said Michelle Suárez, a lawyer for Ovejas Negras (Black Sheep), an organisation of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.

“In Uruguay we have a very fundamentalist, homogenising view. We believe there is a kind of hegemonic moral, which we use to categorise practices and conducts,” she told IPS.

But “Uruguayan society is totally heterogeneous and should be recognised as such,” she added. “So no one-size-fits-all utopias should be imposed; instead there should be an archipelago of utopias, all of which merit a space for development and should be connected under the principle of freedom,” said the lawyer, who drafted the original bill.

The law, which was introduced by the governing leftwing Broad Front coalition, also allows gay couples to adopt children or conceive them by means of in vitro fertilisation. The partners only have to sign a legal parenthood contract in which they assume rights and obligations as parents.

The order of the child’s last names – in Spanish, both surnames form part of the full official name, with the father’s surname coming first – will be decided by the partners, or by drawing lots if they fail to reach a decision.

The age requirement for marriage was also raised, from 12 for females and 14 for males, to 16 for both. But parental consent is necessary until the age of 18.

Uruguay had already taken significant steps towards becoming the 12th country in the world and the second in Latin America to approve same-sex marriage.

The Civil Unions Law was passed in 2007, providing legal recognition of stable unmarried couples, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

But registering under the civil union law is a complicated and costly process that requires couples to demonstrate that they have lived together without interruption for at least five years, in an exclusive relationship.

In 2009, a law was approved authorising partners in civil unions to adopt children. And that year, a law was passed allowing transsexuals to change their names on official documents.

But representatives of the LGBT community stressed that there was still much to be done. “One of the goals we have to focus on is an overhaul of the laws and regulations that have to do with discrimination,” Suárez said.

The lawyer insisted on the need to improve regulations for providing assistance to victims who are discriminated against on the grounds of gender or sexual orientation.

Last week, the Senate approved the bill (with slight modifications) in a vote of 23 to 8. Opposition mainly came from lawmakers of the conservative National Party.

The Catholic Church was one of the voices that most vehemently criticised the bill.

As for public opinion with respect to the question of gay marriage, poll results vary, but generally reflect an evenly divided society.

Senator Carlos Baráibar, the only member of the Broad Front who opposed the bill, left his seat to his alternate at the time of the vote in order to avoid going against the party line.

“I don’t agree with calling it ‘equal marriage’, and the bill itself doesn’t even explain why it’s called that,” he told IPS while the vote was taking place.

Baráibar said he was in favour of recognising the legal rights of same-sex couples. But he said they were not in a situation of “igualdad” or equality with respect to heterosexuals. (In Spanish, “igual” means both “equal” and “the same”.)

“Equality means giving equal/same treatment to things that are equal/the same,” the senator said. “For me, marriage still has an essential reproductive purpose, which comes from history, biology, culture and society.”

Baráibar also said adoption by same-sex couples merited a broader, more thorough debate, and cited studies arguing that children who are raised by their biological parents have better prospects for psychosocial development than children raised by homosexual couples.

“In adoption, it is not the welfare of the adults – who can think for themselves – that must be protected; it is the welfare of the children, who sometimes are babies only a few months old without the power of judgment and who, when they grow up, discover that they are surrounded by a world that is made up of mainly heterosexual couples, while they come from a homosexual family,” he told IPS.

Gay marriage is now legal in Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and Uruguay.

It is also legal in some states in the U.S., the Mexican capital, the southeastern Mexican state of Quintana Roo, and some states in Brazil.

In addition, a gay marriage law was approved Wednesday by the French Senate, and similar bills are in debate in Colombia and New Zealand.

French senators have begun examining a controversial bill to legalise same-sex marriage and adoption, prompting protests by opponents keen to see the reform thrown out.

The bill, which would give same-sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples to marry and adopt children, is expected to pass the Senate after being adopted by the lower house of parliament in February.

Both chambers are dominated by the ruling Socialist Party and its allies.

However, the government has been taken aback by the size and vehemence of protests to the bill, which Catholic, Muslim and Jewish religious leaders all opposed.

The bill has come under fierce attack in a country that is officially secular but predominantly Catholic, mobilising hundreds of thousands of pro- and anti-gay marriage protesters nationwide.

“We have the honour of submitting the bill, which was comfortably adopted by the National Assembly (the lower chamber) and aims to open up marriage and adoption to same-sex couples,” said French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira.

Tight vote expected

Debate on the bill is likely to last until Apr. 12 or 13 in the Senate, after which senators will vote to approve or reject it.

The vote is expected to be a tight one as the ruling Socialist party enjoys a smaller majority in the Senate than in the National Assembly.

Broadly speaking, the Socialists support the proposed reform, as do the Greens, Communists and some centrists.

About 280 amendments have been introduced for debate, and the conservative opposition UMP party may put forward a motion asking for the bill to be put to a referendum.

Early on Thursday, opponents registered their protest by turning up at the home of centre-right, pro-bill Senator Chantal Jouanno, blowing whistles and shouting slogans, to try and persuade her to vote against the bill.

Two other anti-gay marriage groups are planning protests later in the day in front of the Senate – one with whistles, drums, tin cans and saucepans, the other involving Catholics praying.

Polarised society

Opinion polls have routinely indicated that a majority of French people support gay marriage.

On Thursday, research by pollsters CSA showed that 53 percent of the French were “favourable” to same-sex marriage, but that 56 percent opposed adoption by a homosexual couple.

The movement against gay marriage has been more vociferous than the one backing same-sex unions.

A campaign orchestrated by the Catholic Church and belatedly backed by the mainstream centre-right opposition has steadily gathered momentum.

In January, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators flooded into Paris for an anti-gay marriage march.

Last month, police were forced to fire tear gas on people protesting the bill, and dozens were arrested.

French President Francois Hollande championed same-sex marriage and adoption during his election campaign last year, and his support for the legislation has not wavered throughout the turmoil.

His girlfriend, Valerie Trierweiler, has revealed that Hollande will be attending the marriages of gay friends once the legislation is on the statute books.

* Published under an agreement with Al Jazeera.