The new dynamic

I ran across this Roger Cohen editorial in the New York Times international version, the International Herald Tribune, where he takes Sean Penn to task for his fawning tribute to the crown prince Raul. Considering the source, I was taken aback by this particular statement:

Was this really the same Sean Penn who'd just penned a fawning tribute to the grim Cuban president, Raúl Castro, a dictator presiding over a 50-year-old revolution that once dispatched gays to labor camps to correct their "counterrevolutionary tendencies?"

Yes it was, despite the fact that "Milk" is precisely about the sort of grassroots political movement that would be impossible in the Cuba of the Castro brothers; despite the fact that the "inalienable rights" of hundreds of Cuban political prisoners are trampled daily; and despite the fact that the pursuit of happiness for most Cubans has been reduced to eking out an existence on salaries of about $20 a month.

Of course, Mr. Cohen follows it up with an apology to the regime, though it appears his conscience was troubled because he felt the need to enclose the apologetic statement in parentheses and quantify it with a reference to the lack of freedom endured by the Cuban people.

(I know about Cuba's achievements in education and health care. I know gays no longer face persecution. But even basic liberties, like the freedom to leave, are denied Cubans in the name of a "socialism" that allowed an ailing Fidel to hand power to the 77-year-old Raúl in the Castro dynasty's geriatric version of revolutionary politics.)

But the interesting thing I am seeing here is not that Roger Cohen is telling the truth about Cuba, but the apparent reason why he, and quite a few other left-leaning journalist out there, are suddenly feeling the need to speak out. It is not because Cuba has endured a fifty-year sentence of enslavement; it is not because Cubans are denied basic human rights; it is not because Cubans are being oppressed, jailed, and murdered for expressing dissenting views. It has nothing to do with the repression of Cubans, but everything to do with the repression of gay Cubans.

For half a century, tens of thousands of straight and gay Cubans have fought and died in their struggle for freedom from a despotic regime. But people like Roger Cohen cared little about it, until the news began to circulate that gay Cubans had been and were being treated just as badly (or worse) than straight Cubans.

To the left, you can do whatever you want to a heterosexual Cuban, but the minute you start messing with the gay ones, then you're looking for trouble. I believe all Cubans, straight and gay, deserve the same human rights most of the free world enjoys. But to these Castroites, the right for a gay Cuban to be gay trumps the right for a straight Cuban to be free. It is a new dynamic in the topic of Cuba.

Perhaps if Cuba's entire population would turn gay the media and Hollywood would find reason to defend them. It would be an interesting thing to see, but just imagine the effect such an event would have on Cuba's already plunging birthrate.

Posted by Alberto de la Cruz at January 5, 2009 08:24 AM

Comments

Posted by: asombra at January 5, 2009 10:01 AM