Havana workshop discusses homosexuality

HAVANA -- The Iberoamerican Sex Education Workshop on February 9 touched on an issue which has often caused polemics in the region: homosexuality.

A panel of Cuban and international specialists analysed the biological, psychological, social and cultural relationship to this sexual orientation.

Cuban senior physician Celestino Alvarez referred to recent press reports -- notably a documentary financed by a French television network -- presenting Cuba as homophobic, and the government as repressive against gay people. Dr Alvarez said some “serious mistakes” were made in Cuba in the early 1960s, but stressed that the revolution did not create homophobia, and certainly does not promote it today.

Its origins in Cuba, he explained, are to be found in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church against homosexuality brought to the island by the Spanish centuries ago and nurtured over the years. Today in Cuba, he noted, homophobia is not an issue of persecution, but of prejudice. There are no anti-gay laws on the books, he said.

A Spanish psychologist who has done ample work in the area of sexuality among children in his country, told participants that homosexuality is still considered something sinful by a large part of Spanish society, and pointed to the need to improve sex education classes in schools and better train both teachers and health professionals.

The discussion wound up with the screening of a video by a US film student who visited Cuba in the late 1980s, interviewing several Cuban gay men and women, as well as heterosexual people, on the issue of homosexuality. The film argues that all Cubans have equal access to free health care, education, employment and parental custody -- whatever their sexual orientation -- but that a strong bias against homosexuality still permeates Cuban society.
[From Radio Havana/Pegasus.]

This article was posted on the Green Left Weekly Home Page.
For further details regarding subscriptions and
correspondence please contact glw@greenleft.org.au

Tools

• Bookmark This Page
• Print This Page