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2016 Postmortem
Showing Original Post only (View all)What life was like for LGBT Cubans when Bernie Sanders was praising Castro [View all]
Allan Brauer ?@allanbrauer 6m6 minutes agoThis is what life for #LGBT Cubans was like when @BernieSanders was praising Castro. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/hiding-cuba-crimes-behind-gay-rights-lies-article-1.1098015
On December 7, 1990, Cuban poet and novelist Reinaldo Arenas ended his life. Forced into exile because of his political dissidence, and dying slowly of AIDS, he could no longer withstand the physical and mental torment of the disease. His brief suicide note, expressing contentment for a life well lived, nonetheless conveyed a sense of burning rage. Persons near me are in no way responsible for my decision, wrote Arenas, whose life Julian Schnabel portrayed elegiacally in his adaptation of Arenas memoir Before Night Falls.
There is only one person I hold accountable: Fidel Castro.
Like countless other gay Cubans, many of whom were executed or rounded up into concentration camps and worked to death in the name of Socialist revolution, Arenas was persecuted for his sexuality. So one can only imagine how he would react to the recent spectacle at the New York Public Library, in which a roomful of gay activists warmly welcomed a high-ranking representative from that despicable regime.
On May 29, Mariela Castro Espin, the niece of Cubas former President Fidel Castro and the daughter of its present leader, Raul, delivered a talk at an event organized by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Back in Cuba, Castro (who is heterosexual) heads something called the National Center for Sex Education and is a prominent supporter of gay marriage. Asked about the regimes interment of HIV-positive people, Castro seemed to talk around the issue, according to Gay City News. Nonetheless, she received a standing ovation.
In isolation, Castros support for gays is laudable. But her campaign for gay rights, such as it is, must be seen within the context of the repression that the Castro regime has inflicted upon the Cuban people for five decades.
The Castro brothers are wise enough to read international political currents; revolutionary machismo isnt in vogue like it was in the 1960s. They know that a sure way to warm the hearts of progressives is to pledge support for some nebulous concept of gay rights. Never mind Cuban gays like all citizens of Cuba save high-ranking members of the Communist Party do not enjoy basic liberties like freedom of speech or religion. They cannot join an independent labor union or vote. When it comes to gay life in Cuba, Not much has changed since Reinaldo Arenas time.
That assessment doesnt come from terrorist groups based in Miami or the mediocre yellow press, as Castro recently described her critics in a radio interview. It comes from In These Times, a left-wing American magazine that publishes the likes of Noam Chomsky. Three years ago, it ran a special feature on Cuba, including an in-depth report about homosexuality.
Government harassment of gays is routine, the magazine reported, and while gays may no longer be herded into concentration camps and worked to death, they are still arrested by police simply for their sexual orientation. Gays are routinely picked up en masse on the streets, beaten, jailed indefinitely, Herb Sosa of the Miami-based, Hispanic LGBT organization Unity Coalition told In These Times.
In a November 2010 vote at the United Nations, Cuba was the only Latin American country to support the removal of sexual orientation from a list, alongside religion, ethnicity and race, of prejudicial motives for murder. When the clause was reinserted after an international outcry and the measure returned for a vote, Cuba abstained...
read: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/hiding-cuba-crimes-behind-gay-rights-lies-article-1.1098015
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What life was like for LGBT Cubans when Bernie Sanders was praising Castro [View all]
bigtree
Mar 2016
OP
A general comment inclusive of the Nancy Reagan Revisions, the OP's work, your own attitude
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#60
Red baiting and gay baiting from the Daily News? How low will you go?
beam me up scottie
Mar 2016
#3
The op is exploiting lgbt rights by citing that rag and also by editing the title.
beam me up scottie
Mar 2016
#57
Oh do tell, I'll have to check it out and see who and what he brought back here...
beam me up scottie
Mar 2016
#62
Your strawman is pathetic. You post nothing of substance, there is no truth to what you posted.
Jefferson23
Mar 2016
#9
If you would not have quoted an opinion piece from the NY News that lied about Arenas
dr60omg
Mar 2016
#59
Maybe but the truth has never come close to the Clinton campaign. The hubris of the Big Money
rhett o rick
Mar 2016
#17
She said she 'misspoke' but she did not clarify by speaking accurately about the actual
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#26
Your candidate crusaded against marriage equality and praised Nancy Reagan for her "work" on AIDS:
beam me up scottie
Mar 2016
#13
So you honestly think Bernie Sanders loves Cuba's mistreatment of gay people, Bigtree?
Scootaloo
Mar 2016
#23
"Sanders LOVES Cuba's mistreatment." -which words/phrases can you contort to even try and mean that?
pkdu
Mar 2016
#80
When are you willing to come off your high horse and respond to things that you post?
Joe the Revelator
Mar 2016
#44
I think maybe some O'Malley supporters feel he would have had a shot if Bernie
TwilightGardener
Mar 2016
#43
You very regularly post advocacy for Palestine. Do you know how they treat LGBT in Palestine?
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#22
Never mentions LGBT in Palestine, although Bernie can't say Cuba without owning all they do...
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#34
Same standard should apply for Hillary. BS supporters make her own everything she ever came near
Jitter65
Mar 2016
#72
In 1972 Bernie called for the abolishment of all laws against homosexuality and the op wants us
beam me up scottie
Mar 2016
#45
No bigtree 1985 was deep into Ron and Nancy's Years of Silence on AIDS, so this notion that LGBT
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#40
I like O'Malley. I think he could have an important role in a Sanders cabinet
Luminous Animal
Mar 2016
#42
Apparently, the OP does not know how to take the beam out of his own eye.
Luminous Animal
Mar 2016
#61
What was life like for LGBT folks in the U.S. in 1985? And not so fucking
Luminous Animal
Mar 2016
#32
And we are still waiting for answer to your very astute question re Palestine.
Luminous Animal
Mar 2016
#49
Moving photo in the article of a woman remembering victims of the Holocaust:
beam me up scottie
Mar 2016
#35
What's life like for women in Saudi Arabia when Hillary was hugging on their leaders?
boomer55
Mar 2016
#52
Why won't you answer Bluenorthwest's question? You are an avid supporter of Palestine.
Luminous Animal
Mar 2016
#70
+1. Bluenorthwest's question was honestly posed and reveals a seeming contradiction.
JonLeibowitz
Mar 2016
#75
Attacking me personally, smearing me for calling you on your moutain of bullshit.
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#81
Okay. But he still has good question, You are a great advocate for Palestine.
Luminous Animal
Mar 2016
#85
So it's different when you do it in 2016? Bernie should not say a 1985 word about Cuba however?
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#111
Where are you bigtree? You have Palestine and Saudi Arabia to account for. Step up and do so.
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#71
The OP is of course personally attacking me as cover for his inability to explain his own actions.
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#107
Your silence reminds me of Ron and Nancy Reagan's 7 Year Silence about AIDS which your candidate
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#78
In 08 bigtree was the most fair and decent poster towards the other candidate and their supporters.
Autumn
Mar 2016
#119
Jordan repealed laws against private sexual acts, public 'displays' are still arrestable and there
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#112
So Cuba is like countless other countries that do not have full rights for LGBT people.
PoliticalPothead
Mar 2016
#99
Are you going to claim that the Miami/Bastista LGBT people had it better?
Todays_Illusion
Mar 2016
#100
You're right there with them: Sanders, Redbaiting and the ‘Denouncing’ Double Standard
Jefferson23
Mar 2016
#109
as proud as you must be trying to suppress my opinion with 50's era deflections
bigtree
Mar 2016
#117
Bullshit, what you have failed to do is present evidence Sanders was an apologist of any kind
Jefferson23
Mar 2016
#118
Ronald Reagan was a defender of South African Apartheid, he vetoed a Congressional sanction against
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#116
The Failure to Act: The Reagan Administration's Deliberate Failure to Address the Aids Epidemic
Bluenorthwest
Mar 2016
#115