Cuba conference celebrates sexual diversity

Cuba conference celebrates sexual diversity
AFP

Cuba opened a Conference Against Homophobia Tuesday, featuring events
celebrating sexual diversity, lesbian films and literature, and
transvestite fashion shows and dances in the street.

It is also honoring Virgilio Pinera, a playwright, poet and essayist who
was banned and silenced by the regime in the 1970s because of his
homosexuality.

President Raul Castro's daughter Mariela organized the events as the
head of National Center for Sexual Education, which campaigns against
homophobia in Cuba and for legislation recognizing same-sex unions.

The events include the publication of an anthology on lesbian
literature, a panel on homoeroticism in Cuban film and media, and a
transvestite conga line through Havana.

A reading of "Brokeback Mountain," Annie Proulx's novel about the
forbidden relationship between two cowboys, was to be broadcast on
Cuba's Radio Progresso as part of the festivities.

Cubans, who had never seen public images of two men making love, were
scandalized several years ago when the 2005 movie of the same name,
directed by Ang Lee, was shown here during a previous conference against
homophobia.

Traditionally stigmatized in Cuba, homosexuality was fiercely repressed
for many years by the regime, which interned homosexuals in work camps
in the 1960s and ostracized them in the 1970s.

Among the victims was Pinera, who had contributed to literary magazines
and newspapers after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959. He died in 1979.

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