KTLA News: "Cuban refugees escape persecution for being gay" (1980)

if you went to the doctor you were labeled as a homosexual if you went out for a walk you were afraid that they would be picked up you always had that fear in in your mind and Tranquility that the police would come and get you and close you in in a jail and hopefully this will develop into a more social Affair the moment uh the um um the refugee who's who's here from the camps saying perhaps but uh we don't think so we don't plan to send them out to their job saying the first thing you say say I'm a gay Cuban they go out to look for work and they go out and say I'm a teletype operator or I'm a typist or I'm a physician and uh we expect them to be judged by their abilities and not by their sexual preference and in Los Angeles it's against the law to discriminate against someone because they're gay here that they permitted to come in usually it was under a u they sought political Asylum and they would come in and based on those grounds they would Grant it even though they were homosexuals and even though the aren't these people also all of them asking for along with the 10,000 that jammed into the perian embassy there were gay people who asked for our political Asylum who were on the grounds of the Peruvian Embassy and those of course will probably get political Asylum but for the others the other night is very strange in Los Angeles we've just discovered that we didn't even know existed and all at once bound they' started coming forward and saying we want to help they're now coming in to volunteer to help us with Spanish um in the office as well as to move out and to say we want to help with sponsors there's a large group of women here the women are not readily um identifying themselves so far now correct me if I'm wrong but in the camps we've only been able to identify about five no we have we have several women that need sponsors but we haven't been able to get female sponsors to accept them so we just have their names in the office waiting for sponsors I'd kind of like to if it's let me restate that is being homosexual in Cuba a very difficult problem more so than it would be here hual yeah quite so what kind of Life Could It describe a little bit of what it's like being gay in [Music] Cuba disastrous horrible an incredible oppression for [Music] homosexuals people were repressed in jobs they were repressed in the tourist centers they were not allowed in be put in jail for up to 4 years and the a new law cter had sometimes they had reasons for putting you in jail but most of the times no sometimes gay people would congregate and have private parties because they would not have any public place to uh meet and they would come in and raid the party for no reason at all and lock him all up uh I will answer that for you because I've known him uh Mr Lara sought political Asylum at the Peruvian Embassy he left his mother and brothers at home he could not stand it any longer he took Asylum at the embassy stayed under a tree for 11 days without food and water until he was granted a safe conduct pass out of Cuba what kind of precautions did he have to take community churches in cooporation with um gay organizations all over this country are in the process of resettling uh what we have been able to identify as over 5,000 uh gay and lesbian Cubans who have come into this country in this last wave in Los Angeles uh we're in the process of the first 200 who are coming into the city uh being placed and an additional 500 700 and all that we plan to help relocate here in the Los Angeles area um with me is Mr Dale leech who is facilitator of the Cuban program on the extreme side of we need sponsors more sponsors than we have this moment uh we have lots of people who have called in but uh there was some publicity that seemed to imply that the federal government was going to shut off um the the uh Cuban the gay Cuban situation into large metropolitan areas and that's just not true so we've had some people who said well I didn't think I could sponsor that the program is not going on and so we're looking for sponsors but I'm going to ask that this time if Aldo benan will make his statement and um then we'll open volunteer teachers it's not an easy job but it'll work here's wh where in Spanish in Spanish mhm uh I don't speak English okay why don't we open it for questions and then that'll be uh Alien gays uh what what are they saying to you now what they're saying to us at this point is very interesting we um all the refugees who came in are in limbo gay are non-gay it doesn't matter the the government has not decided yet what category they're going to let them into the country on so every 6 months until Congress decides Ides they're in limbo uh I met with Mr Roger wter I believe in the estate department in Washington DC we had a discussion about this uh at this point uh the government um is taking the attitude that nobody's going to be sent back to Cuba just because they're a homosexual or a lesbian so at we don't know yet but we're prepared to fight it to take it to court it takes years we have cases right now of an Australian in Los Angeles with his lover Tony Sullivan we've been fighting that case for seven years and we're still nowhere close to resolving that by by identifying specifically identifying gays though who are from Cuba are you not maybe uh endangering their future okay um could you get a little close okay there are several uh people that have already been identified by the state department and the way they did that is as the people came off the boats the state department asked the the men they didn't think about the women they asked the men how many of you are homosexual they had them rais their hand and then they said those of you who stated that just to get out of Cuba take your hand down so the people with their hands left up were marked down on their records as homosexual these people cannot cannot attain to permanent residency or citizenship in this country until the law is changed however the the remainder of those in the camps that have not so identified themselves as gay uh are not now being identified as gay we are letting the refugees know that if they want sponsorship in a gay situation then they can come to their agencies at the camp and ask for sponsorship through Metropolitan Community Church the government is treating it as a church preference and they're in that way trying to avoid identification of homosexuals also um the Cubans a lot of them had been identified already Castro had stamped on their passport ports that they were homosexuals and there was a large number of them that had that wording stamped and once they gave the government that that also identified them so our group has not gone in and given the government any kind of a list we've been working with mainly World Church services they're very good about um uh not giving the government uh the preference list so don't you anticipate maybe some adverse reaction though from the public at large here in Los Angeles we have adverse um problems with the public get large all over the country not just in Los Angeles uh just on the whole issue of homosexuality so when all at once you have quote people who have come to this country um when we have an economic problem where jobs are very bad automatically Americans are hostile at this point against H Cubans period uh whether they're they're homosexual or not um but that's true they're host the the the white majority are usually hostile against the minority groups anyway who they feel are taking quote their jobs you mentioned there's hostility against Cubans already isn't there going to be that much more hostility against gate um massive problems there will be some of course you mentioned the U the present law