CUBA MAY PULL AHEAD OF THE UNITED STATES IN GRANTING EQUAL RIGHTS TO GAYS.
Castro spoke to a reporter from a Mexican newspater and took full responsibility for the persecution of gays.
Fidel Castro has said that he was responsible for Cuba persecuting gay men in the 
1960s and 70s.
The former president told Mexican newspaper La Jornada that there had been moments of "great injustice" against the gay community.
"If someone is responsible, it's me," he said.
In the last few years, Mariela Castro, the niece of the former president and the daughter of his successor, Raul Castro, has become a campaigner for LGBT rights.
Ms Castro, the head of Cuba’s National Centre for Sex Education, has been a strong supporter of legal moves to grant equal rights to all citizens, including steps towards same-sex unions and access to gender reassignment surgery.
Mariela Castro, director of the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), photo by Kaloian from Alma Mater Magazine
Ms Castro is the daughter of Cuba's President, Raul Castro, and the niece of former leader Fidel, who stood down in February after 49 years as the country's Communist ruler.
She has said previously that she wants to "enrich the Cuban Revolution" with her fight for equality between the sexes and gay rights.
The 45-year-old psychologist has been the director of the National Sex Education Centre since 2000.
Recently, she has been campaigning in defense of LGBT rights in Cuba, a task she describes as difficult due to the patriarchal society she lives in.
"I'm deeply sorry about what occurred in my country, about what occurred in the revolution, when the revolution has had a very strong orientation towards humanism," she said in 2007.
Sexual diversity was seen by Fidel Castro as a corrupt consequence of capitalism.
Homosexual sex was partially decriminalised in Cuba in 1979 and an equal age of consent was introduced in 1992.
While social attitudes towards gay people are generally negative, the capital city Havana has a thriving gay scene but all gay rights organisations are banned.
Under Fidel Castro many gay men suffered in Cuban labor camps as the regime “re-educated” homosexuals.
Gays were incarcerated in Military Units to Aid Production (UMAPs) between 1965 and 1968.
Castro believed that hard work would rid the men of their "counter-revolutionary tendencies."
The proposed change to Cuban family law would put members of same-sex unions on a par with heterosexuals.
In January the Cuban culture minister Abel Preito gave public support to gay marriage.
"I think that marriage between lesbians, between homosexuals can be perfectly approved and that in Cuba that wouldn't cause an earthquake or anything like that," said Mr. Prieto, who is also a member of the powerful Politburo of the Communist party and the Council of State, the nation's supreme governing body.
Ironically, all this is coming from Castro’s mouth and his niece after what had been one of the worst human rights violations in the history of the world. Gay men languished in jails, unfed and untreated of any illnesses, they would die by the hundreds. HIV men were placed in SANATORIOS, which were anything but…they would not get any medical treatment or even medicines…the course of the virus would overtake them and they would die a lot faster than if they had been on the outside where at least they would have gotten proper nourishment.
For Castro to say now that they were too busy with other problems is just disengenious since at the time Cuba had the full backing and financial support of the old Soviet Union…if anything now is not the proper time since Cuba is going through one of the worst economic times in the history of the revolution…so that argument doesn’t hold water.
But all things being equal, if the gays in Cuba get to have full rights it would be a slap in the face of America where equal rights and justice is the backbone of our democracy. Let’s hope they do…and I can just see Ileana Ross and Diaz Balart opposing gay rights saying it is something only the communists would accept and use this as yet another excuse to try to sway Cuban-American voters to vote Republican as they have done in all the elections since Cubans obtained their citizenship.
SOURCE: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2010/09/01/castro-takes-responsibility-for-cuba-persecuting-gays/
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-7238.html/
PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2009273,00.html?xid=rss-topstories
