“I am gay. I am lesbian. I am bisexual. I am transsexual. I am heterosexual. I am like you. I am human.”
Add another stripe to that banner, one that reads “I am Bolivarian”. The LGBT movement in Venezuela has the support of no less than the president himself:
On Saturday, Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro reflected before the Great Patriotic Pole “Simón Bolívar” about the conduct of those who discriminate against others, and exhorted the revolutionary political groups to strengthen their socialist values of respect and inclusion.
“The worst discriminator is the one who denies his own nature and, with that, discriminates against himself. He is like the overseer on a slave estate, who was black like all the others, and was more of a slave-driver than the owner of the estate,” said the president, paraphrasing the words of Ingrid Varón, the spokesperson for the sex-diversity group.
During the swearing-in of the GPP in the Caracas Poliedro, Maduro spoke of the initiatives of the political coalition, which consists of 26 national organizations, among them the sex-diversity collective.
The president rejected the right-wing campaign to paint him as a “homophobe”.
“You know that the fascist J.J. Rendón, public enemy of Venezuela, launched a campaign saying that I was homophobic, but the truth is that the people cannot be homophobic, because we do not discriminate against anyone, much less our brothers and sisters of sexual diversity, whom we invite with dignity to come here to work for the nation,” said Maduro.
“You of the sex-diversity movement can count on our support, accompaniment and love,” Maduro added.
Translation mine. Linkage added.
So we see, too, that our old pal Jota-Jota is up to his old dirty tricks, slamming the big guy on sexual grounds this time. Too bad for him that Nicolás Maduro is a strong supporter of LGBT rights, like Chavecito. There is nothing there for that mud to stick to.
On the other hand, I’ve often heard it said that Henrique Capriles Radonski is gay. (I know for a fact that JAVU leader Julio Rivas is.) If that’s true, it’s a tremendous irony, since he has chosen to align himself with the most fascistic and homophobic elements in the country. And it’s quite possible that Maduro too has heard those rumors and is alluding to them in the interest of making his point: that a servant of fascism will deny his own identity in order to gain power over others at any cost.
