{"id":26080,"date":"2018-12-19T04:22:49","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T04:22:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26080"},"modified":"2018-12-19T04:22:49","modified_gmt":"2018-12-19T04:22:49","slug":"cuba-drops-same-sex-marriage-language-from-new-constitution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=26080","title":{"rendered":"Cuba drops same-sex marriage language from new constitution"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Cuba’s National Assembly has said language opening the way to the legalisation of same-sex marriage will be removed from the draft of the country’s new constitution to “respect all opinions.”<\/p>\n

A parliamentary commission responsible for drafting the constitution on Tuesday proposed to omit language defining marriage as the union of “two people … with absolutely equal rights and obligations” following protests by evangelical churches and ordinary citizens in public meetings on the new constitution.<\/p>\n

“The Commission proposes to defer the concept of marriage, that is, to leave it out of the Constitution’s draft, as a way to respect all opinions,” the National Assembly said in a tweet, calling matrimony “a social and legal institution”.<\/p>\n

Instead, the issue should be addressed in the family code that is set to be updated shortly after the new constitution has been approved at a referendum in early 2019.<\/p>\n

The constitutional commission is headed by the head of the ruling Communist Party and former President Raul Castro.<\/p>\n

His daughter, Mariela Castro, is a legislator known as Cuba’s highest-profile advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual rights.<\/p>\n

The commission had in July unveiled a first draft of Cuba’s new constitution to update a Soviet-era one, including an article redefining matrimony as gender neutral. Homosexuality is a divisive issue in the island nation, and while many younger, urban Cubans and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists welcomed the amendment, a majority of Cubans appeared to reject it.<\/p>\n

The dropping of the gay marriage language\u00a0comes despite the pledge<\/a> by President Miguel Diaz-Canel, who assumed office<\/a> in April, to “eliminate all kinds of discrimination from society.”<\/p>\n

The new constitution, which has already won initial acceptance from parliament and will replace the 1976 constitution, will be submitted to the referendum in February next year.<\/p>\n

In the draft there is no mention of a communist society, though the document does reaffirm the socialist nature of the political system and the leading role of the Communist Party.<\/p>\n

It also recognises the right to private property, the role markets can play and the importance of foreign investment.<\/p>\n

The dropping of the gay marriage language is the third dramatic reversal this month for a government that for decades has issued most laws and regulations with little public debate or insight into the working of the Communist Party.<\/p>\n

The government last week eliminated some of the most-disliked sections of new restrictions on entrepreneurs that were met with widespread public criticism. And tough new limits on artistic expression were delayed after protests and complaints from Cuban artists.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE:
\n Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cuba’s National Assembly has said language opening the way to the legalisation of same-sex marriage will be removed from the draft of the country’s new constitution to “respect all opinions.” A parliamentary commission responsible for drafting the constitution on Tuesday proposed to omit language defining marriage as the union of “two people … with absolutely…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":26081,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26080\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}