A New Family Code in Cuba: Interview with Lidia Romero Moreno
This interview was originally published February 2022
Lidia Romero Moreno, LGBTQI+ activist and defender of women’s rights in Cuba, shares her thoughts on Cuba’s new proposed Family Code, its popular referendum process, and its potential impact on LGBTQI+ Cubans.
*The opinions and points of view expressed by interviewees are their own and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions or positions of CEDA.
What are the most positive aspects of the Family Code proposal compared to the current code? What is it missing? If approved, what impact will the new Family Code have for the LGBTQI+ community?
I consider its definition crucial as a Code of affections, which is built from respect for difference and the visibility of historically neglected groups in the family order. The change from Family Code to Families Code is announcing the new Code’s inclusive, plural, and democratic character. It proposes a range of options and alternatives to mediate family conflicts, which allows it to break with the models of patriarchy.
From the legal point of view, the Code responds to the new principles of family law in direct dialogue with international human rights treaties. I am referring to the protection of families; the protection of marriage; the protection of the most vulnerable; the principle of equality between spouses and children; the principle of protection of the most vulnerable by including the principle of the best interests of children, girls and adolescents, and the least favored person within the marriage relationship. Finally, the autonomy of the will and minimum intervention of the State. When you read the project, you soon realize that it interprets [international human rights treaties] with depth, expands on their content, and establishes new standards. Therefore, it can become an international benchmark.
[The new Code] recognizes gender equality and the rights of women; the rights of girls, boys and adolescents; the various forms of kinship and their responsibility for care; the rights of grandfathers, grandmothers, the elderly, and people with disabilities; marriage and de facto union regardless of the sexual orientation and gender identity of the person; prohibits child marriage, establishing a minimum age of 18 years for adolescents to enter into marriage, and prohibits exceptional authorization of child marriage by legal guardians; allows solidarity gestation (surrogate motherhood); and condemns family violence. It replaces the concept of parental authority with that of parental responsibility and introduces new content such as co-responsibility and positive parenting, among others.
You have mentioned in previous interviews that there is still a lot of work to do to offer the LGBTQI+ community social protection and representation in Cuban society. Do you think that the possible legalization of same-sex marriage at an institutional level would help combat social discrimination against the LGBTQI+ community in Cuba?
Yes, especially from the symbolic and patrimonial perspective. The roots of discrimination do not go away with the stroke of a pen. Opposition to same-sex marriage, which is very evident on social media, shows a healthy patriarchal system. It is understandable, it is a very well structured system and historically reinforced by medicine, religion, education, and law. To think that expanding rights is to take them away from those who have always enjoyed them, that institutions such as marriage will lose value if it is allowed between people of the same sex, to argue about the impossibility of procreating when many heterosexual couples decide not to do so, to advocate maintaining the term of parental authority instead of parental responsibility, are examples of intolerant conceptions of how family relationships are configured today in Cuba and the world.
The Code project is not innovating, it is protecting relationships that already exist, that are characteristic of the development of society. Therefore, the arguments above do not hold up because they are based on devaluing non-heteronormative relationships; they go against the recognition of equality and dignity of people.
They have to change not only the laws, both those that are in the legislative schedule and those that must necessarily be incorporated, and the institutions must do it because they design public policies.
If education does not break its inertia we will achieve little, because without education there is no possible right. The school reproduces discriminatory behaviors of other social spaces. The academic studies developed in Cuba show how the prejudices that enter into the intellectual formation are repeated and frequently reinforce stereotypes.
The possibility of moving forward in this direction is frozen. In February 2021, the Ministry of Education approved Resolution 16, which approves the comprehensive Sexuality Education Program with a Focus on Gender and Sexual and Reproductive Rights in the National Education System. In September, in an embarrassing and laughable argument, the Ministry announced its postponement “because the tense economic situation present in the national territory, did not make it possible to guarantee the production of textbooks, plans and programs, methodological orientations and workbooks for the generalization of the Third Improvement of the National Education System or other educational programs.” Days before, several religious denominations developed a campaign that included letters to the government. They threatened to not take their daughters and sons to school if it was implemented.
This confirms that the rights of LGBTQI+ people, although they have constitutional status, will have a long struggle and many obstacles for their realization in development laws.
The discussion of rights for the LGBTQI+ community has primarily focused on marriage. What other important issues for the LGBTQI+ community should take priority or are of greater concern to LGBTQI+ Cubans?
[The conversation] has focused, socially and institutionally, on marriage between people of the same gender due to the relevance of Article 68 [which would have opened the door for same sex marriage but ended up being removed] during the popular consultation process of the current Constitution. Activism has been calling for all rights for all people for years. We are aware of the equal importance of all human rights. And that the progress of one makes possible that of all. That is why our campaigns have a plural look, so that no one is left behind. It is also perceived that way because the opposition is so strong that it constantly forces us to have to defend the right to love ourselves. Although currently anti-rights campaigns have shifted their focus to parental custody and parental responsibility.
The Penal Code will be approved in April and we have scarcely had the time to study it. The project proposed by the Supreme Court, rule in its Article 388.1, refers to the crime against the right to equality and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, among other suspect classes (a class of individuals that have been historically subjected to discrimination) that generally accompany discriminatory acts. This, [Article 388.1], has been one of the crimes proposed by LGBQTI+ activism [for inclusion in the Penal Code].
We are concerned about the criminalization of activism that is projected in articles 143, 274.1 and 275.1. The first prohibits any type of support from “... non-governmental organizations, international institutions, associative forms or any natural or legal person of the country or of a foreign State (...) with the purpose of financing activities against the State and its constitutional order, incurs a sanction of deprivation of liberty from four to ten years.”
Article 274.1 sanctions the promoters, organizers or directors of an association not authorized to be constituted and its associates or affiliates. 275.1 to those who participate in meetings or demonstrations and their organizers. A complex context is designed, especially when approved before the Law for the Protection of Constitutional Rights and the Law of Associative forms, both planned for this year.
The Public Health Law must take into account the research results on inequalities, gaps and inequities for access to health services. The Civil Registry Law and its regulations must include the possibility of changing one’s name and the gender marker by administrative means. The current law opens the possibility of the latter once genital reassignment surgery is accessed. Finally, a special law for trans people would make it possible to protect their guarantees for the free development of personality.
Many members of the LGBTQI+ community have complained that their rights should not be determined through popular referendum and should instead be guaranteed. How do you think the determination of updated rights for the LGBTQI+ community through popular referendum will shape the outcome?
If the “No” is approved, the current one would be unconstitutional. Firstly, it would go against constitutional principles such as progressivity. This Code establishes limits to the legislative body and indicates that under no circumstances can there be setbacks in the recognition of rights. That is, they are constitutionally obliged to expand the legislative catalog. Likewise, it would be against the principle of equality and non-discrimination that cuts across the law of laws. Specific sectors are confident that the “Yes” will win— I prefer to remain cautious.
If you could communicate one message to the Cuban people who are not part of the Queer community, what would you say, especially regarding the Family Code?
I invite all people with good intentions to study the project. [I hope] that they maintain their alertness in the face of anti-rights campaigns. Comparing the current Code with the one we are discussing could be an interesting exercise in citizenship. It is beautiful, transgressive and regulates realities and necessities that have cost and still cost lives. The Cuban State, like others, is not giving anything away. A better Cuba is built by wrenching rights away from the patriarchy.
*This interview was originally conducted in Spanish. In adhering to English norms we have translated “same-gender marriage” as “same-sex marriage.”
