Posts
"The Hollywood and liberal elites in places such as New York and Washington have championed the rights of gays and want to ban groups such as the Boy Scouts, but when it comes to monsters such as Fidel Castro, they are silent.
"I witnessed this liberal hypocrisy in October 1984, during the only showing of the late Oscar-winning cinematographer Nestor Almendros' documentary "Improper Conduct" at the Washington Blade's Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Washington, D.C.
"While the film accurately portrayed Castro's brutal treatment of gays, outside the theater a group of gay and lesbian members of the Workers World Party bitterly protested the film.
"It was a paradox to me, knowing the systematic state repression that gays and lesbians have been receiving in Cuba since 1959.
"But it is a paradox we have witnessed time and again with liberal activists from Jane Fonda to Barbra Streisand arguing for closer relations with Cuba and railing against states such as Colorado for unfairly treating gay people.
"I was so shocked by the protest by the Workers party outside the theater, and the outrageous reaction of these seemingly ignorant fanatics of the realities of gays in Cuba, that I felt compelled to write an answer in the Washington Blade newspaper to the diatribe of two women against the film in the issue of Oct. 19, 1984.
"I wrote, 'I remember these two women distributing propaganda pamphlets at the entrance of the Biograph the evening "Improper Conduct" opened the festival, as well as their hysterical reaction during the film and when it was over. Thanks to people and organizations [Workers World Party] like these, the truth about Cuba has been kept from the American people and the world, thereby directly contributing to the oppression and hell-like existence under which the Cuban people have been condemned to live, under the totalitarian dictatorship of Fidel Castro.
"'Obviously the Workers World Party is not advocating human rights for the gay people of Cuba. Their reactionary attitude is as detrimental to Cuban gays as the oppressive government there.
