Jim Devine
Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:10:27 -0700
from SLATE: >>Castro Takes the Blame for Persecution of Gays In an interview with a Mexican daily newspaper published on Tuesday, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said that if anyone is to blame for the persecution of gays and lesbian during his country's Revolution, it's him. "They were moments of great injustice, great injustice!" Castro told La Jornada of the times he sent openly gay men to labor camps throughout the 1960s and '70s without so much as a trial. "We had so many and such terrible problems, problems of life or death, that we didn't pay it enough attention," Castro said in the wide-ranging, five-hour interview of the way gays were treated at the time, according to CNN. "At the time we were being sabotaged systematically, there were armed attacks against us, we had too many problems," he said. "Keeping one step ahead of the CIA, which was paying so many traitors, was not easy." In 1979, Cuba—and Castro, its Communist leader since seizing power during the Revolution in 1959—decriminalized homosexual acts. More recently, groups in the country have been pushing for the legalization of same-sex unions, the BBC reported. Ill health forced Castro, 74, to transfer power to his younger brother Raul in 2006. Read original story in CNN [http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/americas/08/31/cuba.castro.gays/index.html] | Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010 << -- Jim Devine / "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- Karl, paraphrasing Dante. _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list pen-l@lists.csuchico.edu https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l