Amendments to Household Code will enable same-sex marriage, homosexual adoptions, and surrogacy
Practically 4 million Cubans voted in favor of the government-backed amendments to the island’s Household Code in a well-liked referendum, authorities in Havana mentioned on Monday. Preliminary outcomes present greater than 66% of the votes solid favored the proposal to legalize same-sex unions, surrogacy and adoption of kids by homosexuals, amongst different issues.
Turnout in Sunday’s referendum stood at 74% of the Cuban citizens, estimated at 6.25 million. Based on the Nationwide Electoral Council of Cuba, preliminary outcomes confirmed 66.87% of the votes in favor, with 33.13% in opposition to.
Of the 5,892,705 ballots solid, 3,936,790 had been YES, whereas the NO choice obtained 1,950,090 votes, mentioned NEC chair Alina Balseiro. Whereas the outcomes are preliminary and a few precincts are nonetheless counting, the end result was “irreversible,” she added.
“I feel that Cuba has grown up,” President Miguel Díaz-Canel informed Granma, the official newspaper of the Cuban Communist Celebration. Modifications to the code had been wanted, he mentioned, as a result of Cuba has grow to be extra various and there have been authorized points that got here up “within the life tales informed nowadays, recorded in analysis works, and in conditions mentioned in court docket.”
“Love is now legislation!” the official account of the Cuban presidency tweeted on Monday morning, celebrating the passage of the 100-page legislation.
Diaz-Canel additionally “regretted that for causes of perception part of the citizenry nonetheless doesn’t perceive that the legislation respects the kind of household that they defend and in addition protects the rights of different types of love.”
Many Christians and social conservatives opposed the amendments. Whereas the island’s Communist authorities as soon as criminalized homosexuality, the niece of the late revolutionary chief Fidel Castro, Mariela, has taken the lead in advocating for LGBT rights.
Havana virtually proposed legalizing same-sex unions in 2018, however scrapped it to make sure the passage of a brand new structure. This time, the federal government went all-in, urging Cubans to vote in favor of the brand new code, as a result of it “protects everybody with out exclusion, privileging the respect for human dignity,” per Granma.
Castro overthrew the US-backed authorities in 1959, and dominated till 2008, when he retired in favor of his brother Raul – Mariela’s father. Whereas the nation is formally secular, it stopped being atheistic in 1992. About 60% of the island’s inhabitants identifies as Christian, most of them Catholic adopted by a rising variety of Evangelicals.
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