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Cubans to vote Sunday on controversial family code allowing same-sex marriage

Cubans will vote this Sunday in a referendum on a controversial family code that would allow gay marriage and surrogacy pregnancies, but which has sparked opposition from religious groups and activists who question the intense government campaign behind the Yes vote.

The new code includes several articles allowing same-sex couples to marry and adopt children, and expanding rights for women, children and seniors. It also provides a path for families to have children through an unpaid surrogate mother.

The Sunday referendum comes after a lengthy drafting process and strong push-back from conservative hardliners within the government and religious groups who forced authorities in 2018 to remove language that would have legalized same-sex marriage from the new Constitution being debated at the time.

The government decided it would deal with the issue in the context of a new family code and, in a much-criticized decision, announced the new law would also need to be ratified in a referendum, in an uncommon move, since the code has already been approved by the National Assembly, Cuba’s lawmaking body. The code had even been published in the Official Gazette, but authorities later clarified that if the No vote wins Sunday, the new code will not be enforced.

For months, Cuba’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel, and other government officials have been campaigning on social media for a Yes vote. On Tuesday, Díaz-Canel met with a group of LGBTQI activists, intellectuals and experts linked to the government and representatives of different social sectors, including seniors, members of religious groups, students and professionals, in a carefully designed setting to convey Díaz-Canel’s approachability and public support for the new law.

“I am sure that this moment is also a milestone in the history of the Revolution and, moreover, of Family Law; many countries will be inspired by this experience,” said Raúl Castro’s daughter, Mariela Castro, during the meeting.

As head of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education, Mariela Castro has been a strong proponent of same-sex marriage. But she has also been criticized for trying to erase her family’s role in the prosecution of gays after her uncle, the late Fidel Castro, rose to power. Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl oversaw the confinement of thousands of homosexuals, people who professed religious beliefs, and others perceived as hostile into forced labor camps known as Military Units to Aid Production, or UMAP, in the 1960s.

In the meeting Cuban writer Miguel Barnet, 82, who, is gay and was once threatened with being sent to one of the UMAP camps, praised Fidel Castro’s “honesty and courage” for taking “responsibility for the UMAP and for the issue of sexual discrimination, when he did not have that responsibility.”

But despite the government’s efforts, the new law — and how the government has handled its rollout — has been the subject of intense controversy, mostly on social media and independent news outlets.

Cuban Catholic bishops have strongly opposed the code, which they see as imbued with “gender ideology.”

Critics also say the referendum on the family code is a smokescreen for a government that is in desperate need of showing some legitimacy and of scoring a win at a time the economy and political repression are at their worst. Members of the opposition, activists and independent journalists have penned articles and campaigned on social media for a No vote or an abstention, warning that the government, which is openly equating a Yes vote to supporting the revolution, will be seen as a positive show of democracy.

Cuban independent journalist and longtime dissident Miriam Celaya wrote that “beyond the circus and independently of the balloting results,” the referendum was a ruse by “the same repressive, dictatorial and homophobic regime” to sow division and keep the population distracted.

“It would be great,” she added in a Facebook post, “if we stopped being such idiots once and for all and wake up to the irrefutable fact that all democratic choreography of ‘citizen participation’ on this island is a colossal deception.”

Critics of the government have pointed out that authorities are selectively expanding some rights while withholding fundamental civil and political liberties. But others say that opposing the government should not come at the expense of minority rights and other positive benefits included in the code, like mechanisms to protect children against violence.

“We are going to have equal marriage, a human right widely fought for by the LGTBQI community in Cuba,” Cuban art historian Carolina Barrero, whom the government forced into exile in Spain, said on Facebook. “We are also going to have democracy, civil and political rights. The two things are not antagonistic. Only in the totalitarian fiction promoted by Castroism are they opposed to each other. That poisoned pill no longer confuses us. We are building democracy from within authoritarianism.”

Several activists have also questioned why LGBTQI rights should be put to a vote after approval by the National Assembly and the lack of reference to femicides in the family code, which are increasing in Cuba, according to groups tracking the killings, like Yo Sí Te Creo (I do believe you) and Alas Tensas.

But despite the shortcomings in the family code, many in the LGBTQI community and women’s rights groups have said they will vote for it to become law, even if it serves the government politically.

“If ‘No’ wins, the regime will pose it as democratic, assuming the result as the ‘sovereign decision of the people;’ it will not affect them politically, quite the opposite,” wrote Cuban actor and LGBTQI activist Daniel Triana on Facebook. “It is in their best interest to acknowledge an expression of dissent.

“There is a DICTATORSHIP anyway in Cuba, but in one case, we will live in a DICTATORSHIP with some guaranteed rights. I prefer ‘Yes.’