Sexsalud 2013 will be carry out by Infomed, the telematics network system in Cuba, and it is sponsored by the National Center for Sexual Education (CENESEX), Provincial Information Center of Medical Sciences and magazines Alma Mater and April 16.

The debates will focus on sexuality in youth college of these days and will cover issues such as violence, human couple, family planning, family, adolescence, gender, functions and dysfunctions.

Diversity and sexual health, and sexually transmitted diseases including AIDS, sexual and reproductive rights, seniors, treatment in the mass media, masculinity and femininity are also on the agenda.

The forum will run until February 28 and involve to the staff of higher education institutions, comprising a significant number of young teachers also interested in these issues.

With this interactive mode, the CENESEX expandes its coverage among the new generations of Cubans in order to achieve a healthy and responsible sexuality, with special emphasis among those formed in related medical specialties.

Tuesday, May 29, 2012,
7 – 8:30 p.m.

In 2010 the Cuban government began providing sex reassignment surgery free of charge as part of their universal healthcare. This was the result of several years of work by the Cuban National Center for Sex Education under the leadership of Mariela Castro Espín, niece of Fidel Castro and daughter of current Cuban president Raúl Castro. The current developments in LGBT rights in Cuba are remarkable given the discrimination suffered by gays, lesbians, and transgender people in Cuba in the 20th century, as well as comparison with current LGBT movements in the U.S. and abroad. Please join us on  Tuesday May 29th at 7pm in the Trustees Room of the New York Public Library ’s Stephen A. Schwarzman Building as Mariela Castro Espín and Rea Carey, Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, discuss the current international context of LGBT rights, including issues of sexual identity and orientation in contemporary Cuba.

Mariela Castro Espín is the director of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX). She was President of the Cuban Society for the Multidisciplinary Study of Sexuality (SOCUMES) from 2000 to 2010. She is president of the Cuban Multidisciplinary Centre for the Study of Sexuality, president of the National Commission for Treatment of Disturbances of Gender Identity, member of the Direct Action Group for Preventing, Confronting, and Combatting AIDS, and an executive member of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS). She is also the director of the journal Sexología y Sociedad, a magazine of Sexology edited by her own National Center for Sex Education (CENESEX). She is the author of 9 books, published in Cuba and abroad, among them Transexuality in Cuba (Havana, CENESEX Publishing House, 2008). In 2009 she was awarded with the Public Service Award from the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS), and in 2012 she received the Eureka Award for Academic Excellence, given by the World Council of University Academy (COMAU).She is married with 3 children.

Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, is one of the most prominent leaders in the U.S. lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights movement. Carey, who came to the Task Force in 2004 as deputy executive director, has served as executive director since 2008. Through her leadership, Carey has advanced a vision of fairness and justice for LGBT people and their families that is broad, inclusive and unabashedly progressive. Prior to her work with the Task Force, Carey worked extensively in HIV/AIDS prevention and in the LGBT community as one of the co-founders of Gay Men and Lesbians Opposing Violence and the founding executive director of the National Youth Advocacy Coalition. She has also served as an advisor to major donors and foundations, and has served on the advisory boards for such wide-ranging publications as Teen People magazine and the Georgetown University Journal of Gender and the Law. She serves on the Advisory Board of theLGBTQ Policy Journal, of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government

A CubaNews translation. Edited by Walter Lippmann

I bought it this morning at my nearest news-stand and I first read it throughout while standing in the bus, then after I found a seat and finally in my office. I devoured the base document for the National Conference of the Communist Party of Cuba to be held next January. It was published last Friday and contains two explicit references to sexual orientation, something unheard of in our country.

Among the objectives that the Party must focus on heretofore- which will be discussed by all grass roots members- are these two:

54. Confront racial, gender, religious, sexual orientation and other prejudices that may generate any form of discrimination or limit people from exercising their rights to, among others, occupy public posts, and participate in the political and mass organizations and in the defense of the country.

65. To reflect in the audiovisual media, the printed and digital press Cuban reality in all its diversity regarding the economic, labor and social situation, gender, skin color, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and territorial origin.

Furthermore, the document’s introduction states that “the current challenges require (…) confronting prejudices and discrimination of all kinds that still persist in society”.

There is much more to be said about these purposes which we Cuban militants will be discussing shortly. These reflect the numerous consultations conducted after the VI Party Congress held last April where in some of them I was able to voice my personal views together with othe activists of the LGBT groups within the social networks of CENESEX (National Center for Sexual Education), and also with regards to the press.

With regards to the specific topic of sexual diversity, the enunciation is sufficiently broad to cover a series of transformations that are necessary to guarantee respect for the free sexual orientation and gender identity in Cuba. This has to do with the legal status of homosexual unions and the participation of LGBT persons in responsibilities of any kind, including military institutions.

The issues are on the table but substantiating, persuading, establishing and regulating will be no easy tasks. There is still much to be done.