If the following Wikipedia article is right Brian overstates the repression(quite real) of gays in Cuba.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_rights_in_Cuba
On one hand the seems to be no report of massacres carried out by official forces after the Revolution. There does seem to be systematic prejudice and heavily-handed, cruel, and insensitive intervention into personal freedom that comes in waves -- labor lamps, forced confinement of AIDS patients, attempts at "conversion." No doubt there is a lot of gay bashing. I heard of some of the fairly innocuous kind at Paquito DeRivera concert, where he explained that he took up the horn because his father regarded his initial instrument, the piano, as faggy. (But the best jazz pianist in the world today is the Cuban Gonzalo Rubicano.) These reflect pretty traditional Latin prejudices but do not play so well in a supposedly liberatory society. Homosexuality is now legal, decriminalized, according to the article, and Cuban society is somewhat more welcoming.
I don't mean to excuse Cuban repression of gays, but Cuba is also repressive on other dimensions, notably towards political dissidents. In those cases there may be marginally more justification in terms of worries about US intervention that do not arise with gays.
All that Sid, and with no justification for Cuban civil rights violations, I think it would be an error to ignore how the Revolution has meant been a vast improvement in the lives of most ordinary Cubans, even even gays benefit by social policies like employment that is guaranteed as it can be on a poor island, subsidized houses and utilities, free universal education, free health care (for non AIDS related diseases or stupid attempts to "cure" their orientation) and the like. In addition, insofar as the issue is comparative, most other Latin and Caribbean countries have policies and attitudes that are no better towards gays without any of the corresponding benefits for poor and working people.
The upshot is that the Cuban Revolution deserves what Trotskyists called out "critical defense" -- defense for its accomplishments, criticism for its failings and abuses, including most of its policies towards GLBTs. Brian's flat out condemnation is insufficiently nuanced, even if Cuba has been a disappointment on this dimension.
jks
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/23/06, Brian Charles Dauth
> <magcomm at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
> > > I do wish you wouldn't consistently label
> everything a straight
> > person does or any group of straight people as the
> work of "hets"
> > as if all heterosexuals were a monolithic group
> with a single
> > mindset concerning queers.
> >
> > That is why I used the term heteronormativity. It
> was that state
> > of mind that led Castro to try either to eliminate
> or to re-train the
> > queers of Cuba (See Arenas and Almendros for the
> details). I
> > think it sprang more from his brain than his
> loins.
>
> Gay men certainly suffered from severe state
> homophobia in the 1960s,
> but are Reinaldo Arenas and Néstor Almendros'
> "Improper Conduct"
> (1984) reliable sources for facts about it?
>
> I'd say works like Gay Cuba (Dir. Sonja de Vries,
> 1995, cf.
>
<http://www.brightlightsfilm.com/17/08a_gaycuba.html>)
> give more
> factually accurate representations of evolution of
> GLBT individuals'
> lives in Cuba.
>
> > To this day my friends tell me gay gatherings are
> raided, a gay
> > person cannot join the Communist Party, and Cuba
> has consistently
> > refrained from endording the Brazilian Resolution
> since its
> > introduction in 2003.
>
> When civil liberties are denied in Cuba today, they
> are usually denied
> on the basis of political, not sexual, orientation,
> especially real or
> imagined links to the American government that has
> been committed to
> the overthrow of the Cuban government. Are GLBT
> individuals more
> subject to civil liberties violations than straight
> individuals who
> have the same or similar political orientation and
> relation?
>
> And are GLBT individuals better off in Brazil than
> Cuba?
>
> While GLBT individuals of higher classes and
> statuses in Brazil
> probably enjoy better lives than those in Cuba, poor
> Brazilians, not
> just straights but also GLBTs, have it worse in
> Brazil than Cuba.
>
> To take one example, according to this article by
> the Grupo Gay da
> Bahia, "from 1980 to 2004, there were 280 cases of
> murders motivated
> by prejudices about sexual orientation in Bahia"
> alone:
>
> <blockquote><http://www.ggb.org.br/direitos.html>
> Assassinato
> Transformista morto em Amaralina
>
> Amigos de Geraldo Silva Nascimento acreditam que
> prática da homofobia
> é o motivo mais provável do crimeO maquiador e ator
> transformista
> Geraldo Silva Nascimento, 27 anos, dirigia-se para
> sua residência no
> bairro de Amaralina, por volta das 6 horas da manhã
> de ontem, após
> sair da loja de conveniência do posto de gasolina do
> bairro, na
> Avenida Octávio Mangabeira, quando foi atingido por
> dois tiros na
> cabeça, que tiraram sua vida. Até as 10 horas da
> manhã, o corpo ainda
> se encontrava no local à espera de remoção pelo
> Instituto Médico Legal
> (IML), rodeado por amigos e familiares indignados e
> surpresos com o
> crime. Segundo o amigo da vítima Gil de Lima,
> Geraldo trabalhava
> atualmente como maquiador e ator transformista do
> teatro Miguel
> Santana, além de fazer shows em diversas boates gays
> da cidade e
> festas particulares, quando se apresentava pelo nome
> de Lalesca De
> Capri. "Geraldo não fazia vida, trabalhava
> dignamente, não era
> envolvido com drogas e não tinha inimigos
> declarados. Tudo indica que
> foi uma morte motivada por preconceito", disse Gil.
> Os demais
> conhecidos da vítima que se encontravam no local do
> crime fizeram
> questão de ressaltar que Geraldo era uma pessoa boa,
> alegre,
> contagiante, "que não devia nada a ninguém".
> Informaram que ele nasceu
> e se criou em Amaralina, onde era muito conhecido.A
> loja de
> conveniência na qual Geraldo se encontrava antes de
> morrer, era
> freqüentada habitualmente por ele, que costumava
> tomar cerveja e
> comprar cigarro no local, exatamente o que havia ido
> fazer na manhã de
> ontem.Existem informações desencontradas sobre se a
> vítima estava
> sozinha ou acompanhada no momento do crime. Um
> morador do bairro, que
> não quis se identificar, disse que o ator estaria
> acompanhado por um
> homem, que também teria sido baleado e encaminhado
> para o Hospital
> Geral do Hospital (HGE). A reportagem, no entanto,
> não encontrou
> registros do caso no HGE.De acordo com vizinhos,
> Geraldo tinha irmãos
> e morava com a mãe, que ainda não havia sido avisada
> por sofrer de
> pressão alta. Uma coincidência infeliz é que o pai
> da vítima morreu há
> exatos sete anos, também no dia de Natal.
>
> HOMOFOBIA – Com o assassinato de Geraldo Silva
> Nascimento na manhã de
> ontem, o número de homicídios contra homossexuais na
> Bahia chega a 16
> apenas no ano de 2004, segundo informa Marcelo
> Cerqueira, presidente
> do Grupo Gay da Bahia (GGB).Segundo ele, de 1980 a
> 2004, são 280 casos
> de assassinatos motivados por preconceito por
> orientação sexual na
> Bahia. Os dados integram dossiê elaborado anualmente
> pelo grupo, que
> indica os diversos tipos de violência praticados
> contra homossexuais,
> desde agressão e insulto verbal, até violência
> relacionada ao
> extermínio, como parece ter sido o caso de Geraldo.
> "Se de um lado
> registramos conquistas, por outro constatamos que a
> onda de homofobia
> aumenta a cada dia", aponta Cerqueira, informando um
> dos objetivos do
> dossiê é pressionar as autoridades a criar leis que
> garantam os
> direitos dos gays e implementar projetos, como o que
> está em
> tramitação na Assembléia Legislativa, que propõe a
> criação de um
> disque-denúncia para vítimas de preconceito e
> violência por orientação
> sexual. "A homofobia é crime de ódio, e a nossa luta
> é para que as
> penas sejam cumpridas exemplarmente e, assim, evitar
> novos casos",
> diz. (Tatiane Freitas, Jornal A Tarde, 26 de
> dezembro, 2004.)
> reprodução da matéria.</blockquote>
>
> In many (all?) Latin and Central American countries,
> including ones
> that are governed by center-left governments, a
> phenomenon called
> "social cleansing," right-wing vigilantes murdering
> "undesirables,"
> has arisen during the neoliberal stage of
> capitalism. This problem is
> especially aggravated when the government is on the
> Right, as in the
> case of Colombia:
>
> <blockquote>During our visit to Colombia we first
> heard reports of
> 'social cleansing' in the Human Rights Forum in
> Bogotá, where
> individual testimony identified that amongst others
> Lesbians, Gay men
> and Trans people are targeted for social cleansing.
> The notion of
> social cleansing was first used by the Colombian
> National Police in
> the late 1970s, the term "disposable" (desechable)
> has since passed
>
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