First modification:
Cubans vote this Sunday for a series of reforms within the Family Code. Same-sex marriage, surrogacy and multiple parents are part of the range of changes in this text in terms of social rights.
More than eight million Cubans are called to answer Yes or No to the only question: “Do you agree with the Family Code?” The new legislation, which if approved will replace the one in force since 1975, defines marriage as the union “between two people”, opening the door to homosexual marriage and adoption for same-sex couples.
It will also allow the legal recognition of several fathers and mothers, in addition to the biological ones, as well as surrogacy, as long as it is non-profit, in addition to other rights that favor children, the elderly and the disabled.
Several of these issues are sensitive in a society still marked by machismo that was exacerbated in the 1960s and 1970s, when the government ostracized many homosexuals or sent them to militarized farm labor camps.
In the following decades the authorities changed and now the new code has been the subject of an intense government media campaign.
“The Family Code raises above all respect for human beings, respect for everyone. We recognize and accept the differences that already exist in our society,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel said recently.
Reticence and acceptance
In Latin America, same-sex marriage is legal in Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Chile, and in several Mexican states. Regarding surrogacy, it is authorized in two states of Mexico and in other countries it is in a legal limbo, it is neither prohibited nor allowed.
The Cuban government tried to introduce equal marriage in the 2019 Constitution, but had to back down in the face of strong criticism from the Catholic and Evangelical Church.
In a statement, the Cuban bishops’ conference returned to the fray this month by opposing several points, such as adoption by same-sex couples, assisted pregnancy and extended paternity.
“It is not ethical that the so-called ‘solidarity gestation’ be recognized as appropriate, in which a woman who carries a child in her womb for nine months must deliver it immediately after childbirth to other people,” said the Catholic hierarchy.
Between February and April, a consultation of the Family Code was carried out in 79,000 neighborhood meetings, neighborhood by neighborhood. This led to a 48% modification of the text.
But the wide spectrum of the code, of almost 500 articles, feeds doubts among some who agree, for example, with same-sex marriages, but not with adopting.
For the Cuban political scientist Rafael Hernández, it is “the most important piece of legislation in terms of human rights” that occurred in Cuba after the great changes at the beginning of the 1959 revolution.
For the first time there are groups claiming that the government “has gone overboard” by over-fulfilling what was promised.
“The government is making it easier for the most conservative sectors of society to become visible with their own ideas, without making them up,” says Hernández.
It is the first time that Cubans go to vote for the validation of a law. In a context of deep economic crisis, a migratory exodus and more than a year after the historic demonstrations of July 11, 2021. There are even citizens tempted to refrain from going to vote in protest.
Opponents of these code changes have taken to social media to call for a vote against the text or abstain. But the law will take effect immediately if he gets more than 50% of the vote.
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