Cubans voted in favor of new legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, surrogacy and other practices related to family settings, in a referendum on Sunday (25) — only the third in more than 60 years of rule. .
According to the Electoral Council, the project was approved with 66% of the votes. According to the organization’s president, Alina Balseiro, the result shows an “irreversible trend”.
The new Family Code, which will replace a law that has been in force since 1975 and takes effect immediately after the victory in the popular consultation, defines marriage as the union “between two people”, opening the door to LGBTQIA+ marriage and the adoption of children by homosexual couples.
It will also allow the recognition of fathers and mothers in addition to the biological ones, as well as surrogacy —provided it is non-profit-, and will add other rights to children, the elderly and people with disabilities.
Polling stations opened at 7:00 am local time (8:00 am Brasília time) in Havana. Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel voted early in the morning, accompanied by his wife, Lis Cuesta, in the municipality of Playa, west of the capital.
After casting his vote, he said that the new law “is a fair, necessary, updated, modern norm that gives rights and guarantees to all people, to all diversities of families, people, creeds.”
More than eight million Cubans were expected to answer “yes” or “no” to a single question: “Do you agree with the Code of Families?”. Several issues included in the new code are sensitive in a society marked by machismo that was exacerbated in the 1960s and 1970s, when the dictatorship condemned many homosexuals to ostracism or sent them to militarized fields for agricultural work.
In the following decades, the authorities changed their stance, and now the new code has been the subject of an intense media campaign by the regime, which tried to introduce same-sex marriage into the 2019 Constitution, but had to back down in the face of criticism. of Catholics and Evangelicals.
In a statement, the Episcopal Conference of Cuba returned to the fray this month, opposing several points in the text, such as adoption by same-sex couples, assisted pregnancy and extended paternity.
Between February and April, a consultation was carried out on the Code of Families in 79,000 meetings of residents, neighborhood by neighborhood, a movement that led to a modification of 48% of the original text.
The code’s broad spectrum of nearly 500 articles raises doubts among some who agree, for example, with same-sex marriage but not with adoption.
In a context of deep economic crisis, migratory exodus and more than a year after the historic demonstrations of July 11, 2021, there are citizens tempted to abstain from voting in protest.
Opponents have taken to social media to ask for votes against the text — or abstentions. In Latin America, equal marriage is legal in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile and several Mexican states.
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