CUBA AND VENEZUELA SIGN AGREEMENT TO PROMOTE GAY RIGHTS

Hopefully this will help stop the evangelicals (and some radical Muslims) from promoting in Latin America the same crazy thinking they have started in Africa. The interesting thing about this cooperation is both countries have national health care systems. There is a benefit to society to have their people as psychologically healthy as possible. It cuts down on health costs, helps people become fully actualized, and accepts people as who they are. Stress and low self esteem are detrimental to health. When people are allowed to be who they are they are more productive and creative, this benefits society. Generating hate creates bullying and we know the harm this type of psychological trauma causes. Taking the wind out of the sails of those who would expend a great deal of energy to promote hate based on religion and ignorance by educating people before they hear crazy talk is always the best approach. The governments are using science to back up the truth about L/B/G/Ts rather than letting prejudice and hate take the forefront.

There has been prejudice and injustice in the past in Latin America against L/G/B/Ts often severe due to the influence of Catholicism and machismo type thinking. There are some Latin American countries that have legalized same sex marriage (Argentina, Uruguay, and Mexico City) and others in which legislature is being worked on (Venezuela, Brazil and Ecuador). Their issues are very similar to those here in the U.S.

From La Nueva Cuba.
Cuba and Venezuela Agree to Promote Human Rights of Homosexuals

Cuba and Venezuela signed on Friday a cooperation agreement on sex education that seeks to promote respect for gay rights and fighting homophobia as state policy in both countries, said the daughter of Cuban President Raúl Castro, the sexologist Mariela Castro. The pact provides for "promote sexuality education as state policy, and commitment of our countries," Mariela Castro told reporters, who heads the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX), after signing with the Ombudsman of Venezuela, Gabriela Ramirez. Signed at the closing day of a congress of sexology, the agreement provides "join hands" in "the development of sex education and to identify where our problems are and how we move forward," said the sexologist, 47.


Ramirez said that under the agreement, CENESEX specialists trained about 800 officers of the Ombudsman's Office on issues of sexual diversity and gender identity.


According to Mariela Castro, the agreement also "intends to facilitate and encourage this project to be integrated into other countries of ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas), a regional integration mechanism that are other than Cuba and Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador and three other Caribbean islands.


Under the Congress of Sexology Society of Cuba issued a statement stressing the need for governments include "broadly" in their social policies "attention to transgendered people."


Cuba adopted in 2008, in reaction to Mariela Castro, the sex-change operations, 20 years after being suspended following a first single that sparked controversy rooted in a patriarchal society and trailing times of severe discrimination against homosexuals.

Sexologist Mariela Castro runs the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX)  which is about twenty years old.

CENESEX MISSION

Managing the implementation of Cuba's policy of sex education to coordinate the participation of entities and agencies in charge of social communication, community work, education, counseling and sex therapy to help humans live their sexuality healthy, full, pleasant and responsible.

Mariela Castro's views on Gay Rights in Cuba and much more. That section starts about 1/3 of the way through the interview.