ABOVE: The outside of the MINSAP headquarters. (Photo by María Lucía Expósito)
HAVANA | The Ministry of Public Health (MINSAP) hung a Pride flag on the outside of its headquarters in support of the LGBTI+ community; whose rights to legalize marriages, access artificial insemination and full recognition of gender identity are currently being debated in Cuba.
Tremenda Nota was able to confirm the University of the Arts’ Faculty of the Arts of Audiovisual Media (FAMCA), in addition to MINSAP, also celebrated the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia by placing an LGBTI+ flag on its headquarters.
Activists said the embassies of the Netherlands and of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland, in addition to these institutions, also raised the Pride flag this Monday.
La Marca, an Old Havana tattoo parlor, and AfroAtenAs and El Mejunje in Matanzas and Santa Clara respectively are among the independent community centers that showed solidarity with the LGBTI+ community by hanging LGBTI+ flags.
Some activists took to social media to thank MINSAP for its support and interpreted the gesture as a favorable sign in government policy, which must introduce the family code bill in Parliament in July. Others were critical and referred to the Cuban government’s history of homophobia.
Tremenda Nota photographer María Lucía Expósito was outside MINSAP and took the images that we shared.
