Fidel Castro has come out. In a manner of speaking.
In an interview with a Mexican newspaper, La Jornada, the Cuban leader admitted that he failed to stop the persecution of gay men in Cuba, and openly took responsibility for this failure. That's an unexpected development from a man reviled by his countrymen.
Similarly, there's been enormous progress in the global gay rights movement. Unfortunately, there were setbacks suffered as well in other states (paging Uganda!).
It was a victory in Germany for gay couples, when its Federal Constitutional Court issued a ruling that struck a blow for equality. The court ruled that gay life partners should be able to inherit from each other in the same way that straight married spouses are able to. In layman's terms, a gay couple who married in Germany can pretty much not have to worry about scheming relatives who are probably just waiting for them to die.
In issuing this ruling, the German high court is reported to have discounted the argument that it was necessary to make a distinction between straight and gay couples when it came to inheriting property in order to "protect marriage and family." (I would guess the State argued that it was better for the blood relatives of a gay person to inherit his wealth, rather than his husband, to promote family values. To which Germans can now say, 'whatever.')
In the Netherlands, its biggest publisher of school textbooks is reported to be planning to come out with textbooks and teaching materials that will feature gay and lesbian couples. So, in the questions and examples it will use, it will say stuff like Rolf and Rod went shopping for a million-guilder house, and if Rod has 250,000 guilders, how much does Rolf have to earn over the next year for the couple to be able to buy the house?
This news comes right after what happened in Taiwan last March, when its Ministry of Education announced that elementary and high school textbooks would be revised to accommodate gay topics. According to the official government site, seven study areas would feature lessons of gay inclusion, although the last I heard this was due for implementation in 2011 yet.
So that's the good news. Over on the dark side, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has declared that she does not personally support the legalization of gay marriage in her turf. She said she rejected same-sex weddings because of Australia's "heritage" as a Christian country. Of course, Australian Marriage Equality National Secretary Peter Furness reacted to this, and he demanded that Gillard explain what that "Christian heritage" had to do with same-sex marriage.
In a reported press statement, Furness took a dig at her atheism (She has a live-in relationship as well with an unmarried man), saying "We demand to know how far Gillard will go in the name of our "Christian heritage" - will she outlaw divorce and interracial marriages, recriminalise homosexuality and abortion, suppress atheism, and remove herself and all other women from leadership roles?" "Anyway you look at it, Gillard's statement is offensive, ridiculous and extreme and must be explained or withdrawn."
But Australia is nowhere near Uganda, where a Member of Parliament, David Bahati, has introduced a ridiculous bill that's really offensive. Note that in Uganda, it's already a crime to have sex with the same sex: it's punished with life imprisonment. Even just an attempt to have sex means seven years jail time already.
Now, the bill seeks to make it a duty for all Ugandans to report homosexual within 24 hours. Failure to report the presence of a fashionable gay man around you means jail time. (Wonder what happens if you just mistook a metrosexual to be gay). And what's more alarming, the bill sentences a serial offender (meaning, having gay sex more than once) to the death sentence.
Want a piece of advice on how to make amends, General Castro? Visit Uganda and try to pacify Bahati. That might work off some of that cosmic debt you've amassed.