Castro's Niece Casts Rare 'No' Vote In Parliament, Cg Gay Rights : The Two-Way : NPR

Contents:

• FIL CASTRO TAK BLAME FOR PERSECUTN OF CUBAN GAYS
• CASTRO ADMS 'JTICE' FOR GAYS AND LBIANS DURG REVOLUTN
• FIL CASTRO’S HORRIFIC RERD ON GAY RIGHTS
• MARIELA CASTRO WS GAY-RIGHTS ADVOCY AWARD
• CASTRO'S NIECE CASTS RARE 'NO' VOTE IN PARLIAMENT, CG GAY RIGHTS
• IS THE CASTRO GETTG LS GAY?
• CUBA’S GAY RIGHTS EVOLUTN
• GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI
• NOT THE ONN: MOSW BANS GAY PRI FOR NEXT 100 YEARS
• FIL CASTRO PUT GAY MEN LABOR CAMPS. HIS NIECE MARIELA IS LEADG CUBA’S LGBTQ REVOLUTN.

FIL CASTRO TAK BLAME FOR PERSECUTN OF CUBAN GAYS

Image ptn, Mr Castro told Carmen Lira that he had not paid enough attentn to the treatment of homosexualsFil Castro has said that he is ultimately rponsible for the persecutn suffered by homosexuals Cuba after the revolutn of former print told the Mexin newspaper La Jornada that there were moments of great jtice agast the gay muny.

Embargo agast Cuba enuraged his untry to be creative Havana, Cuba (CNN) -- Former Cuban lear Fil Castro said he acknowledg the persecutn of gays and lbians durg the Revolutn his untry, acrdg to a newspaper terview published Tuday. Some have argued that another explanatn for Havana’s homosexual polici is that Cuba’s ntued pennce on the Soviet Unn for tra and assistance led to a Stalist-style tolerance of homosexualy throughout the earlier part of the .

24 Gay rights activists, both Cuba and abroad, have acced the Cuban thori of applyg the crime of “pre-crimal dangerons” unfairly to homosexuals, and ignorg plats of those who have been beaten or fired om their jobs bee of their sexual orientatn. 25 Other gay rights activists have cricized Mariela Castro for her nsistency and hypocrisy when to gay rights, argug that gay rights activists ntue to be imprisoned, beaten, or simply disappear while she provis ltle more than lip service to the issue. ) When the Human Immunoficiency Vis h the island’s gay muny the mid-1980s, the regime’s rponse was to quarante all HIV-posive people sanariums, referred to as “pretty prisons” by the founr of the World Health Organizatn’s Global Program for AIDS.

CASTRO ADMS 'JTICE' FOR GAYS AND LBIANS DURG REVOLUTN

No doubt attuned to the way which gay rights has bee central to the agenda of a global left creasgly sensive to the claims of inty polics, the Cuban regime recent years has tried to fashn self as beg the vanguard of homosexual liberatn. But no matter how much life for gay Cubans might have improved om the days of forced labor mps, ’s all occurrg wh the ntext of a totalarian society whose cizens nnot vote, are nied basic eedoms like the right to speak or prott eely, and nnot form anizatns pennt of the ernment. "But… I'm jt lookg around at my own iends and who are also gay and lbian and they're leavg the neighborhood, " The Castro's roots wh the gay rights movement began after World War II, when workg class fai moved out and gay men moved .

FIL CASTRO’S HORRIFIC RERD ON GAY RIGHTS

SEE ALSO: US rtor gay and transgenr health protectns reversal of Tmp-era policy District 8 Supervisor Rafael Menlman says 's important to strike a balance between matag the Castro's cultural inty while welg non-gays and straight fai. On May 21, 1979, thoands of members of San Francis’s predomantly gay Castro District muny took to the streets to prott the lenient sentence received by Dan Whe for the murrs of lol polician and gay rights activist Harvey Milk and Mayor Gee Mosne. The rultg vlence affected San Francis’s LGBT muny for s to Milk rose to promence as a gay rights activist and beme the first openly gay person elected to a public office the state of California when he was elected to the San Francis Board of Supervisors 1977.

JAFFARI ALLEN: What has happened is a tremendo difference terms of visibily of LGBT people the prs, on televisn, to remd other Cubans that they are part of the natn and part of In 2010 Fil Castro apologized for his regime's treatment of homosexuals. Mariela Castro says she hop chang attu will soon translate to ncrete laws, like gay marriage (Foreign language spoken)GARSD: Castro, a straight mother of three, says she felt gay rights were a bld spot Cuba's revolutn, so she cid to take actn.

And I fd pretty sad that this is now what we're nsirg Back at the panel, gay activist Ada Bello says the picture is more Whether this is somethg that is beg done to make the ernment look better, or bee they have fact evolved, the realy is that 's She says, whatever happens next, 's too late to turn back the clock on gay rights Cuba. If you’ve read Before Night Falls, the tobgraphy of gay Cuban wrer Realdo Arenas, or seen Julian Schnabel’s wonrful film adaptatn starrg Javier Barm, you have some notn of the dismal treatment of LGBT people Cuba durg the long reign of Fil, the munist revolutnary turned dictator, died Friday at age 90, eight years after cedg learship of his untry to his younger brother, Raúl. After takg power, we’re remd, the lear treated homosexualy as an afont to the hypermascule revolutnary ial, gog so far as to tern gay Cubans forced labor mps, and later, durg the AIDS crisis, to sequter HIV-posive cizens sanariums that were tantamount to 2010, Castro fally acknowledged an terview wh a Mexin newspaper that the programs reprented “a great jtice.

MARIELA CASTRO WS GAY-RIGHTS ADVOCY AWARD

” Later she briefly acknowledg her ground-breakg dissentg vote agast a labor bill that failed to aquately addrs gay rights (Cuba’s parliament generally vot unanimoly), then clar that her work remds her of John Lennon’s “All You Need Is Love, ” which she sgs thickly accented English. “It's gone om beg a gay village to beg a tourist statn for people around the world who want to e here and experience a ltle b of the gay, ” says Don Romburg, an LGBTQ historian who moved to the Castro the 1990s after llege. “To have a place San Francis, the world, where gay people n e together as a muny and feel like they tly belong and that there's no real sense of stigma, that's what ma the Castro very special for me as a young guy my 20s, ” Romburg says.

So was downright startlg when, May 2007, Fil Castro’s niece sntered down the street wh a small army of drag queens wavg gay pri before the Obama admistratn announced a dramatic shift Cuba policy on Wednday, assertg that isolatg the island had failed, a uple of Wtern ernments wh close ti to the Uned Stat saw the potential to help gay Cubans, even though meant workg wh a proment member of the Castro fay.

CASTRO'S NIECE CASTS RARE 'NO' VOTE IN PARLIAMENT, CG GAY RIGHTS

Havana’s first observance of the Internatnal Day Agast Homophobia and Transphobia marked the begng of a remarkable evolutn of gay rights the most populo untry the Caribbean, a regn where hostile attus toward sexual mori rema the norm.

That said, the vast majory of viss rema trouble-ee, even for visors who equent the cy’s ls-than-secret gay bar and club bt hotels MoswThe historic exterr of the Hotel Metropol, facg the ternatnally-celebrated Bolshoi Theatre and close to many of the other ma thgs to do Mosw, is nothg pared to s sumptuo terrs.

IS THE CASTRO GETTG LS GAY?

Mosw's cy and district urts are unison that gay pri paras Mosw will be banned until at least 2112 -- 100 years om Rights First is already out wh s nmnatn:Human Rights First nmns the Tverskoy District Court lg to uphold the cisn of Mosw thori to ban gay pri paras the cy until May 2112. Rsia -- strategilly important, a key member of the UN P-5, a untry Ameri mt work wh on challeng rangg om Iran to Syria to global oil and energy issu, wh a steady and mostly sensible foreign mister -- is creasgly beg a farce among natns, s serns dissolvg wh idtic gtur like this gay ban. Otherwise, the siwalks and the streets leadg off to the downtown were nearly serted; there were no spectators to watch this hor, s outlandish stum, march to the summer— was 1978—timat of the gay populatn of San Francis ranged om seventy-five thoand to a hundred and fifty thoand.

If the oft-ced figure of a hundred thoand was more or ls rrect, that meant that this cy of fewer than seven hundred thoand people approximately one out of every five adults and perhaps one out of every three or four voters was gay.

It was, after all, the third year the mayor had gone to a drag ball the civic program my prs k showed that there were a hundred and thirty-eight ntgents the para, and that wh a few exceptns, such as Straights for Gay Rights and the San Francis Commissn on the Stat of Women, all of them reprented gay anizatns of one sort or another. Wh the program, was possible to sort the anizatns to certa tegori: polil anizatns, human-rights groups, profsnal associatns, social-service anizatns, ethnic-mory groups, relig anizatns, llege groups, out-of-town ntgents (such as the Napa Gay People’s Coaln), aternal anizatns (such as transsexuals and bisexuals for gay rights), sports groups, and mercial enterpris. The para anizers, however, had chosen to mix up all the groups, so the actual orr of the para might have e om the pag of Cl Lé the time our tck turned onto Market Street, I was too late to see the head of the para: the Gay Amerin Indian ntgent, followed by Disabled Gay People and Friends, and then by a nety-piece marchg band and the gay polil lears of the cy.

CUBA’S GAY RIGHTS EVOLUTN

To the expert observers on my tck, most of the spectators appeared to be majory of San Francisns uld ntue to ignore the growg gay populatn their midst part bee the cy was still centralized, s rintial neighborhoods a seri of ethnic villag: black, Hispanic, Irish, Italian, Che. Yet this mory, beg fed by sire alone, materialized full only once a year, on Gay Freedom time to time durg the slow march up Market Street, me to me to see the gay para as the unfurlg of a municipal dream sequence—the clowns, the drag queens, and the men their leather sus beg the fantastic imagery of the cy’s llective unnsc.

New York and Los Angel had their gay areas, but the Castro was unique: was the first settlement built by gay nizens of the Castro were overwhelmgly male, but ocsnally a crowd of men on the street you would see two or three young women drsed jeans or jumpsus. He had already ma his speech—a strong one, I was told—nouncg the so lled Briggs Iniative, a proposn on the November ballot that would have driven all openly gay teachers and all discsn of gay rights out of the public schools.

GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

Both seemed to be crowds of the sixti returned—only now both of them were next day, June 26, 1978, the San Francis Chronicle reported that two hundred and forty thoand people had turned out for the annual Gay Freedom Day Para. Hay, who was then married, met Rowland and Hull Los Angel 1950 and asked them to jo him creatg an anizatn whose aim would be to raise the nscns of homosexuals and take polil actn on behalf of what he fed as an opprsed cultural mory. The headquarters moved om Los Angel to San Francis, and 1955 two other San Francisns, Del Mart and Phyllis Lyon, found a sister anizatn they lled the Dghters of two “homophile” anizatns, as they were known, did not, of urse, create the homosexual populatn San Francis; rather, the reverse was te.

) Though gay history remas largely anecdotal until the neteen-fifti, is clear that the homosexual populatn creased after the Send World War, when homosexual soldiers and sailors mobilized the cy took a look at the wateront and cid not to return to Kansas Cy and Duluth. In any se, there were some thirty homosexual bars the cy the early sixti, when the new crackdown proximate e of this crackdown was a charge ma 1959 by a mayoral ndidate that the cumbent mayor had allowed “sex viat” to tablish their natnal headquarters the cy. Police harassment was often feroc: the crackdown of the early sixti, most of the bars were closed (some temporarily, some permanently), and hundreds of gay men and women were picked up each year, often simply for dancg together or holdg hands.

The gay liberatnists, however, were largely llege stunts, a generatn younger than most of the members of the Mattache Society, and a large proportn of them were volved wh the other radil movements of the sixti rather than wh the homophile groups. In jt a few years, the movement did “change the nscns” of young gay men and women across the untry: not jt the lleg but the high schools; not jt the ci but the small towns; and among those who otherwise red nothg for radil polics.

NOT THE ONN: MOSW BANS GAY PRI FOR NEXT 100 YEARS

There were no reliable statistics, but the movement was clearly natnal, and many ci was on a sle to be of some signifince to cy planners and the early seventi, San Francis seemed to be a logil place for movement activists to settle; not only was there a large and fairly open homosexual muny but San Francis was the place where gay liberatn had s longt and probably s strongt roots.

) In 1971, Richard Hongisto, a civil-rights and anti-war activist, who was the San Francis Police Department, was elected sheriff of San Francis County; on takg office, he gave a great al of attentn to improvg relatns between the gay populatn and the police. It was unr the stewardship of the liberals that San Francis polics gaed s reputatn for many gay immigrants me to San Francis durg the neteen-seventi is difficult to say exactly, for they me a flood of other young immigrants, most of them whe, most of them sgle, themselv shaken loose om their home towns by the natnwi shift om an dtrial to a postdtrial enomy. At a party that Maley had at his hoe after the gay para, I met, among others, Randy Shilts, then a rrponnt for the lol public-televisn statn, KQED, and the only openly gay major-media journalist town; Peter Adair, a documentary filmmaker, whose latt film, “Word Is Out, ” explored the liv of twenty-six gay men and women om several generatns; Toby Marotta, a Harvard-traed social scientist, who was dog a study of gay htlers for a policy rearch stute and wrg a history of gay liberatn New York; and Jim Rivaldo, a polil nsultant, who wh his partner, Dick Pabich, had worked on the Harvey Milk mpaigns.

They had equated homosexualy, as Toby Marotta wrote, wh “a world of eccentric bachelors and effemate characters, of unsavory public sex scen and dgy bars and steam baths”—a shadowy world of directn and nflict, guilt and tragedy. Foster had received a dishonorable discharge om the Army; Goodste had been fired as vice-print of a bank; Stok had been mted to a mental stutn and given electroshock therapy (and had later studied law orr to fight for gay rights). His speech marked a turng pot for the movement natnally, bee permted homosexuals to claim that, for the first time, a mastream polil party regnized homosexuals as a mory wh legimate grievanc and claims to equaly before the 1972, therefore, Foster, Stok, and their lleagu had the bt of crentials to reprent “the gay vote.

FIL CASTRO PUT GAY MEN LABOR CAMPS. HIS NIECE MARIELA IS LEADG CUBA’S LGBTQ REVOLUTN.

Along the way, he gaed support om the Teamsters, the Firefighters Unn, the Buildg and Constctn Tras Council lols, and small bsmen, but the end his ma supporters were the thoands upon thoands of young gay men settlg the many rpects, of urse, the young men did not differ very much om the olr generatn of gay immigrants makg up Foster and Stok’ nstuency. ” Ten days later, when Vice-Print Walter Mondale me to Goln Gate Park to addrs a rally on the subject of human rights, Milk and a number of his supporters picketed the rally and heckled Mondale for not speakg about gay rights.