Reply #22: Nope. (Ho hum, yet another Cuba "expert*".) [View All]

[Mika]

This is Fidel Castro former president of Cuba, a nation with the lowest AIDS/HIV transmission rate due to their UN and WHO award winning national prevention and prophylaxis education programs.

Cuba has approved sexual reassignment surgery as part of their healthcare system.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=4653650#4654004

This year the National Assembly has taken up a gay marriage bill, likely to be approved

The president's daughter, Mariela Castro, is the leading advocate for GLBT rights in Cuba as the head of Cuba's National Center for Sex Education.

http://www.thegully.com/essays/cuba/010621gay_cuba.html
JUNE 21, 2001. A few hours before floats, rainbow flags, and a sea of humanity filled Sao Paulo's central Avenida Paulista last Sunday for Latin America's biggest ever Pride Parade, Agence France Presse reported that, in Cuba, two gay male couples also made history by publicly holding the first gay wedding there.


When it comes to gay rights, is Cuba inching ahead of USA?
http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/02/post_72.html

Cuba: Celebrations of advancing gay rights
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/760/39274


Mariela Castro
"In the early years of the
revolution much of the
world was homophobic.
It was the same here in
Cuba and led to acts
which I consider unjust."

I've shaken hands with this amazing woman in the late 90's when she addressed, in place of her uncle, a H-C seminar that I attended.

Cuba has never been perfect. Never will be. GLBT-phobia and mistreatment is unconscionable, but we (Americans and Cubans) are evolving.

But when it comes to health issues (namely AIDS/HIV), Cuba has never been discriminatory in its treatment of all people. Unlike during the Reagan era, when RR wouldn't even utter the word or acknowledge AIDS as it was wiping out wide swaths of Americans, Cuba dealt with the unknown epidemic (at that time) that could have overwhelmed their health care system. They did this head-on with treatment, care and development of successful treatment and prevention strategies.

I was there. I saw it with my own eyes.