>As I understand your position, Jerry, if the US is
>attacking a country, an American is morally
>incapatated for raising any criticisms against any
>atroticities that that government may commit. Thus,
>Aericans should not have criticized Pol Pol killing
>field, Stalin's gulag, the excesses of the Chinese
>Cultural Revolution, etc. Does that prohibition extend
>to the Nazi holocaust?
>
I think what Jerry is arguing is that
1. Fidel did not persecute gays in Cuba because he was a socialist, but because he was Latin. Jerry suggests that there may have been an identification of open gayness with the status of Havana as a U.S. brothel; and, only in that sense, was the opposition to gayness politically motivated: to oppose gayness was to oppose that influence.
2. The criticism of Fidel and the socialist revo in Cuba for oppressing gays is hypocritical as is is A) just a means of getting lefties to attack a socialist country--that is, the people who want to restore Capitalism in Cuba are no more gay friendly than Fidel is and B) those people don't seem to be equally sensitive and vocal about far worst excesses that the U.S. is currently guilty of and therefore the motives or intelligence of these people is suspect.
That's my interpretation anyway.
I would add one thing though: the Cubans are roundly blamed for the way that they treated AIDS victims and this is held up as one more example of oppression, but in fact all AIDS victims had medical care and continued to be paid their salaries, which made it possible for their families to survive. It is true that they were quarantined, but this quarantine makes perfect sense in that it protected others from certain death. Free medical care was NOT available to AIDS patients most other places in the world and nor were they quarantined, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of uunnecessary deaths. Cuba continues to have one of the lowest incidences of aids in the Americas (If not THE lowest). I dont' call that oppression. I remember too that Arenas died of Aids in the US with no health care and no support: I guess that was the price of freedom.
Joanna