By an overwhelming majority, voters in Cuba passed an amendment to the government’s “Family Code” that legalizes same-sex marriage through the nation, CNN reports, making Cuba more progressive and human-rights friendly than the Republican Party.
With 74% of voters in the Sunday referendum approving the measure, Cuba now recognizes LGBTQ couples. After decades where the Castro regime would imprison LGBTQ people in work camps, homosexuality was decriminalized in Cuba in 1979–years before similar sodomy laws were struck down in places like Texas, Alabama and Utah.
Although evangelicals have made a major push to recruit new followers in Cuba, the government put the issue on the ballot in large part thanks to the efforts of Mariela Castro, the 60-year-old daughter of former Cuban president Raul Castro, who used her position as head of the Cuban National Center for Sex Education in Havana to advocate for expanding marriage rights to all.