Cuba celebrates its first transgender wedding

Summary of story from AlJazeera, August 14, 2011

A gay man and a transgender woman have married in a first-of-its-kind wedding for Cuba.

Ignacio Estrada, 31, and Wendy Iriepa, 37, tied the knot as a transexual couple last Saturday at a government marriage office before a state official.

Same-sex marriage is banned in Cuba but the couple’s union did not break the law, as the bride is legally a woman after undergoing the country’s first state-sanctioned sex change operation in 2007.

The wedding was aimed at advancing homosexual rights in Cuba.

Many gays and transsexuals have been fired from government jobs, jailed, sent to work camps or left for exile, a climate of persecution chronicled by exiled writer Reinaldo Arenas’ autobiographical Before Night Falls.

Today the island and its government are much more tolerant, and some of Cuba’s best-known dissidents participated and US diplomats attended in a public show of support.