Thank you Cuba for imprisoning and torturing homosexuals

[Brian_Expat]

http://www.galha.org/glh/213/cuba.html

The popular left-wing journal Lunes de Revolución was run largely by gay writers. Its radical ideas seemed to enjoy the tacit support of the rebels in the Sierra Maestra. A couple of years after Castro came to power, however, Lunes de Revolución was closed down, as were other freethinking magazines. Many gay authors and journalists were publicly disgraced, refused publication and dismissed from their jobs. Some were reassigned to work as janitors and labourers.

While Castro challenged many backward ideas as remnants of the old society, he embraced with enthusiasm the homophobia of Latin machismo and Catholic dogma, elevating it into a fundamental tenet of Cuba's new socialist morality. Idealising rural life, he once claimed approvingly that "in the country, there are no homosexuals".

When Cuba adopted Soviet-style communism it also adopted Soviet-style prejudice and puritanism. Ever since Stalin promoted the ideology of "the socialist family" and recriminalised gay sex in 1934, communist orthodoxy dictated that homosexuality was a "bourgeois decadence" and "capitalist degeneration". This became the Cuban view. "Maricones" (faggots) were routinely denounced as "sexual deviants" and "agents of imperialism". Laughable allegations of homosexuality were used in an attempt to discredit "corrupting" Western influences, such as pop music, with the communists circulating the rumour that the Beatles were gay.

In the name of the new socialist morality, homosexuality was declared illegal in Cuba and typically punishable by four years' imprisonment. Parents were required to prevent their children from engaging in homosexual activities and to report those who did to the authorities. Failure to inform on a gay child was a crime against the revolution.

Official homophobia led, in the mid-1960s, to the mass round-up of gay people, without charge or trial. Many were seized in night-time swoops and incarcerated in forced-labour camps for "re-education" and "rehabilitation". A few disappeared and never returned.

[Chipper Chat]

1. How long will it be before the US is like this?

When Macho Fidel Bush authorizes new Attorney General Gonzales to form a secret arm of the FBI to spy on the US gay community and collect information and names - well they wont need warrants to arrest and imprison the "deviates." Especially if Patriot Act II passes, and also if Bush's far-right nominees to the Sup Court are confirmed. Antonin Scalia will look like Thurgood Marshall in comparison to bigoted homphobes such as Chuck Pickering and Bill Pryor.
How many times do I have to say it: Remember Nazi Germany! (And I don't like writing this stuff, but someone has to).

[arwalden]

2. This Is Jesusland!! You Won't Have Long To Wait!

:scared:

[mitchtv]

3. those days are over from what I hear

and have seen on "Gay Cuba' on linktv(I believe)could've been FSTV

[JanMichael]

4. Why the hard-on about Cuba tonight? Bored or something?

Just curious:-)

Thinking about visiting there?