Cuba votes to legalize same-sex marriage, surrogacy | World Information
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Cubans voted to legalize same-sex marriage and adoption in addition to surrogate pregnancies in a referendum over the weekend, the communist nation's electoral officers mentioned Monday.
Preliminary outcomes point out an "irreversible pattern," with nearly 67 p.c of votes counted to date in favor of the government-backed change, electoral council president Alina Balseiro mentioned on state tv.
"The Household Code has been ratified by the individuals," she mentioned.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel tweeted: "Sure has gained. Justice has been performed."
The up to date code represents a significant shift in a rustic the place machismo is robust and the place the authorities despatched LGBTQ individuals to militarized labor camps within the Sixties and Seventies.
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Official attitudes have since developed, and the federal government performed an intense media marketing campaign in favor of the overhaul, which can substitute the nation's 1975 Household Code.
The brand new code permits surrogate pregnancies so long as no cash adjustments palms, and legally acknowledges same-sex adoptions, in addition to a number of fathers or moms along with the organic mother and father.
It defines marriage because the union between two individuals, quite than that of a person and a lady, whereas additionally boosting the rights of kids, the aged and the disabled.
"In the long run we gained!" wrote LGBTQ rights activist Maykel Gonzalez on Twitter.
Diaz-Canel mentioned the change "settles a debt with a number of generations of Cuban women and men whose household initiatives have been ready for this regulation. Any longer we will likely be a greater nation."
Based on the Nationwide Electoral Council, 74 p.c of Cuba's 8.4 million eligible voters forged a poll, with 3.9 million legitimate votes counted to date in favor and 1.95 million towards.
Turnout, nonetheless, was nicely beneath the final referendum, when a brand new structure was adopted in 2019 with 90 p.c of individuals casting a poll. Additionally it is the bottom share the communist authorities has obtained in a vote since Fidel Castro's 1959 revolution.
For political scientist and opposition determine Manuel Cuesta Morua, this victory for the federal government was "pyrrhic."
"Now we have new guidelines for the household... however the regime misplaced," he advised AFP.
"Firstly, as a result of whenever you add up the No vote and abstentions, it's virtually equal to -- if no more than -- the sum of people who voted Sure."
Diaz-Canel acknowledged on Sunday that "for such complicated points, the place there's a variety of standards," individuals may forged "a punishment vote."
Specialists had predicted earlier than the vote that many Cubans would use the referendum as a way to precise their disapproval of the federal government.
Dissidents had referred to as on residents to reject the code or to abstain.
However Cuban political scientist Rafael Hernandez mentioned adopting the brand new household code was "an efficient step within the route of social justice," and that this was the "most necessary" authorized safety for human rights for the reason that revolution.
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And Cuban tutorial Arturo Lopez-Levy, from the College of Holy Names in California, famous to AFP that "with this laws, Cuba is on the forefront" of such rights.
The regulation required 50 p.c voter approval to be adopted.
The referendum got here amid the nation's worst financial disaster in 30 years, which was exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic.
It was the primary time a problem apart from a constitutional change had been put to a public vote in Cuba.
The principle opposition to the regulation's adoption got here from Protestant and Catholic church buildings, the latter of which blasted the adjustments as "gender ideology."
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