MIAMI, United States. – After the entry into force of the new Family Code After the popular referendum held on September 25, couples of the same sex or gender have gone to the corresponding notaries to get married.
“Today we made official what was true a long time ago,” wrote this Tuesday on Facebook the young Cuban Rocío Baró Guerra. “We still have many dreams to fulfill and struggles to give, but for today, we are super happy. We got married !!!”, she added when sharing the photos of the ceremony.
A week ago, last Tuesday, a couple of men from Manzanillo, in the province of Granma, celebrated the first same-sex marriage on the island, according to the National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX).
“For 24 hours, the lives of the young people from Manzanillo Alberto and José took the sensitive and official turn that they dreamed of so much. After almost 18 years of consensual relationship, on Tuesday afternoon they were able to sign, before a notary, the official union in marriage, the first to occur in Granma province, after the new Cuban Family Code was approved,” reported on Facebook the official journalist Roberto Mesa Matos.
The new Family Code defines marriage “as the legal union between two people of legal age and capacity to do so,” which allows same-sex/gender couples to marry on the Island.
“I never thought they would approve it here but we always wanted it,” said Alberto, one of the men who got married in Manzanillo, according to the Mesa Matos report.
“The ceremony took place in the couple’s home, nuanced by a family atmosphere, and with the complicity of dozens of friends who wished Alberto and José full happiness,” added the same source.
“Thus they seal a process that now offers them responsibilities in the face of some situation of the spouses, the legal support of assets acquired in common and the rights to food and care. And on top of that, the love in colors that they swore to each other almost two decades ago,” the journalist concluded.
After the entry into force of the new Family Code, the jurist and deputy director of CENESEX, Manuel Vázquez Seijido, alluded to possible obstacles and lack of information in notaries and civil registries in Cuba, which would prevent people of the same exo/gender from contracting marriage.
“Any refusal by notaries or civil status registrars to formalize marriages or register unions is a violation of the rights of people,” said Vázquez Seijido in a Facebook post.
“I urge those who experience this type of refusal to make the corresponding complaints before the appropriate instances. This exercise will contribute to the structures of the legal system being able to get feedback in relation to what is happening in practice and, in this sense, correct this type of errors”, added the jurist.
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