5-21-08, 11:00 am

As civil rights activists in the US prepare to defend the recent landmark California State Supreme Court ruling overturning a state ban on gay marriage against a Republican Party-led backlash, Cuba is launching a campaign to combat homophobia in that island country.

According to media reports, Cuban President Raul Castro's daughter Mariela Castro, who heads Cuba's Center for Sexual Education, has been an important voice for Cuba's LGBT community within the country's top political echelons. Castro told foreign media sources that she sees the government as taking special steps to advance the political rights of the country's LGBT people.

The Cuban government recently celebrated the International Day against Homophobia and top leaders have praised political and cultural changes that are more accepting of LGBT people. Government leaders have also criticized discriminatory practices and government agencies are offering medical detection and treatment of sexually transmitted diseases more openly.

'Things are advancing, but must continue advancing, and I think we should do that in a coherent, appropriate and precise way because these are topics that have been taboo and continue to be for many,' Cuban parliament head Ricardo Alarcon recently told the Associated Press. Cuba's parliament is currently considering legalizing same-sex unions and expanding social benefits linked to marriage to same-sex couples.

Mariela Castro told AP reporters that LGBT equality is a cornerstone of the 1959 revolution that overthrew US-backed dictator Fulgencia Batista. 'The freedom of sexual choice and gender identity are exercises in equality and social justice,' she said.

While the advancement of equality in Cuba still faces many cultural and political obstacles, these new developments there contrast sharply with the United States. Here, mainstream Republican Party figures, such as Rev. John Hagee who endorsed John McCain after McCain aggressively sought that endorsement, try to stir up hatred of LGBT people by blaming them for social problems and natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina.

In 2006, Hagee told NPR that “Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.” Hagee added, 'New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God ... there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came.”

Hagee implied that God destroyed the city to stop the gay pride parade. 'What happened in New Orleans looked like the curse of God,' he pontificated. '[I]n time if New Orleans recovers and becomes the pristine city it can become it may in time be called a blessing. But at this time it’s called a curse.'

But Hagee isn't the only top Republican to impose his religious views, which apparently advocate killing LGBT people and wiping out those who live near them, on the political question of equality.

In a congressional race in the battleground state of Missouri, Rep. Sam Graves (R) issued a new television attack ad linking his opponent, Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, to 'San Francisco' values and depicts three apparently LGBT people who presumably reflect those values. The offensive, homophobic message in the Graves ad is meant to stir up hatred of gay people in order to avoid dealing with the Republican Party's idea deficit on issues like jobs, the economy, health care, ending the war, and the price of gas.

Likewise, Republican Party front groups have used Internet rumor-type campaigns to accuse presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama of being gay. And in two of the recent special elections in solid Republican-held districts in Louisiana and Mississippi, losing Republican candidates tried to link their Democratic opponents to Obama and the idea of San Francisco values. While these efforts failed, it is clear that Republicans are intent on bringing a hateful and homophobic message into the race this fall (not to mention the racist campaign already surfacing).

Frankly, Republicans like John McCain and others have no right to denounce Cuba on democratic questions when they can't get their own house in order. Hate, inequality, and divisiveness are not democratic principles by any stretch of the imagination.

--Reach Joel Wendland at