Cuba ahead of U.S. in gay rights.

[Boogie]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070227/cm_usatoday/w...

When it comes to gay rights, is Cuba inching ahead of USA?

HAVANA - Years before George W. Bush proclaimed his support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriages in the United States, the ideologically rigid government of Fidel Castro made a big move in the opposite direction.

It sanctioned the production and viewing of Strawberry and Chocolate, an Academy Award-nominated film about the awkward friendship between a straight man and a gay man - and the homophobia they both had to battle.

Since this movie debuted in theaters here in the mid-1990s, the Cuban government's intolerance of homosexuals has given way to a more egalitarian treatment of gays and lesbians.

The public persecution of homosexuals has declined sharply. Two years ago, Cuba had its first gay film festival. Last year, the highest-rated show on Cuba's state-run television was a soap opera in which a married man fell in love with another man. And now this country is on the verge of enacting a law that gives same-sex couples some form of legal status.

[donco6]

1. This simply cannot be true.

Cuba is the root of all evil.

Oh . . . almost forgot . . .

[Boogie]

2. Viva Gay Castro!!!

[donco6]

3. Well . . . maybe not THAT far.

But it is a disgrace that the US - a supposedly enlightened advanced country - is being surpassed in the granting of civil rights by CUBA! It wasn't that long ago that we had the legitimate right to call them on civil rights abuses. Now we have no such right.

[enid602]

5. I'm confused.

Hasn't the Castro always been gay?

[cboy4]

4. When it comes to "gay rights," which country IS NOT inching

ahead of the United States?

[devilgrrl]

6. Saudi Arabia?

Hey, what are friends for?

[Forkboy]

7. Wow...two hot button issues in one!

[cali]

8. LOL!

Pass that popcorn!

[TahitiNut]

9. Three. Fidel smokes, too. (Gotta import them Havanas.)

... and there's them Cuban wet-foot almost-immigrants.

[Boogie]

10. Pretty cut and dry for freeper types.

One more reason to loathe Castro and now they can lump him in with the Global Gay Conspiracy.

[WorldResident]

11. I call BULLSHIT. When Castro reparates victims for his gay concentration camps, then we can talk

n/t

[Boogie]

13. Documentation?

Please submit.

[WorldResident]

14. Here

1960

Cuba: the police begin Operacion P, arresting prostitutes, pimps, and "pederasts" and herding them into concentration camps. Although same-sex relations are not illegal, large numbers of gay men and smaller numbers of lesbians are arrested as part of a wide-ranging campaign against people whom Fidel Castro's government believes are inimical to the revolution.

http://www.aaronsgayinfo.com/timeline/time60.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_rights_in_Cuba

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

12. Obligatory Simpsons quote:

Castro: Comrades, our nation is completely bankrupt! We have no choice but to abandon communism!
All: (sighs)
Castro: I know, I know, I know... but we all knew from day one this mumbo jumbo wouldn't fly! I'll call Washington and tell them they won.
Man: But presidente, America tried to kill you!
Castro: Ah, they're not so bad. They even named a street after me in San Francisco!
Man 2: (whispers in Castro's ear)
Castro: It's full of <what>?!