Gay Marriage Axed in Cuba Before it Became Law

HAVANA TIMES – Cuba’s National Assembly said on Tuesday that language opening the way to the legalization of same-sex marriage will be removed from the draft of the country’s new constitution to “respect all opinions,” reported dpa news.

In a major victory for homophobes on the Caribbean Island, including many members of the Communist Party, a parliamentary commission responsible for drafting the constitution proposed to omit language defining marriage as the union of “two people … with absolutely equal rights and obligations,” following protests by evangelical churches and some citizens.

The Vatican will also be pleased with the decision.

“The Commission proposes to defer the concept of marriage, that is, to leave it out of the Constitution, as a way to respect all opinions,” the National Assembly said in a tweet.

They gave the impression that maybe by the year 2050, Cuba will be ready for such a step of equal rights.

The move comes despite the pledge by the new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, to “eliminate all kinds of discrimination from society.”

Communist Party leader Raul Castro and his daughter Mariela, a lawmaker known as Cuba’s highest-profile advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual rights, have yet to comment on the parliamentary backstepping on homosexual rights.

The new constitution, which has already won initial acceptance from parliament and will replace the 1976 constitution, will be submitted to a referendum in February 2019.

The move to drop same-sex marriage as a possibility in Cuba, may have come out of fear of No votes. The controversy presented a situation where dissident voices on the one side, opposed to the one-party Communist State, and homophobes on the other, could have been strange bed fellows in opposing the new Constitution.

The document reaffirms the eternal socialist nature of the political system and the dominant role of the Communist Party, the only legal political party on the Island.