It has been widely declared the Communist-ruled country’s “first gay marriage”. On Saturday, Ignacio Estrada – said to be a noted Cuban gay rights activist – married Wendy Iriepa who is legally a woman after undergoing Cuba's first state-sanctioned sex change operation in 2007.
According to Reuters, the couple, who fell in love after meeting three months ago, rode through Havana in a gleaming 1950s Ford convertible with numerous onlookers on the streets. They further called their wedding a "gift" to the former leader, Fidel Castro, on his 85th birthday.
The 31-year-old groom was quoted as saying in the Guardian: “This is the first wedding between a transsexual woman and a gay man. We celebrate it at the top of our voices and affirm that this is a step forward for the gay community in Cuba.”
Although the pair's marriage is legal, same-sex marriage however is not in Cuba despite Saturday's wedding.
The media including some LGBT blogs are noticeably tripping over the correct erminology, with many calling it a “LGBT” wedding or a “gay” (in quotation marks) wedding while others like Xtra.ca, a Canadian LGBT website, simply called it “Cuba's first gay marriage” without any comment on the couple's gender or sexual orientation.
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Cuba's gay history Exiled gay writer Reinaldo Arenas chronicled the climate of persecution is his autobiography Before Night Falls which became a feature film (released in 2000) starring Javier Bardem, Johnny Depp and Sean Penn. |
The gay Instinct blog, operated by the magazine of the same name, called it Cuba’s “first legal gay wedding” but added “well, sorta-gay wedding.” It continued, “the semantics aren't really important” since “the couple reportedly consider their union a gay marriage”.
Euronews, which interviewed the bride and filmed the wedding ceremony in Havana, described it as being seen as “Cuba’s first gay wedding” and quoted the bride as saying: “I think the Cuban government has really politicised this. I haven’t wanted to turn this into a circus, much less something political.” Iriepa reportedly used to work at the National Sex Education Center, or Cenesex, which is headed by Mariela Castro, the daughter of current Cuban president Raúl Castro.
While it’s newsworthy in its own right that transgender people in Cuba are allowed to officially marry – the Guardian however noted in a report that at least one other transgender woman married years ago (presumably to someone of the opposite sex), a marriage between a man and a legally female transgender woman can’t be called a gay marriage no matter how much we support same-sex marriage rights. It’s not clear how the wedding is “a step forward for the gay community in Cuba” unless gay men are looking to marry transgender women. More importantly, insisting on terming it gay marriage further perpetuates the misconception that transgender women should still be regarded as men.
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