14ymedio, Ernesto Camué, Santiago de Cuba | 26 December, 2018 — Dozens of members of the Pentecostal Church Assembly of God participated in Tuesday night in a Christmas pilgrimage through the streets of Santiago de Cuba and celebrated the withdrawal of Article 68 from the Constitution; the article would have opened the door to the legalization of equal marriage.
It is the first procession of the Assembly of God that has received an official authorization. During the tour through the streets of Santiago, the faithful called it an “achievement” that the final text of the Constitution did not include legal recognition of unions between people of the same sex, a proposal that appeared in the draft and that generated a great controversy.
Along with the thrill of holding a Christmas time pilgrimage for the first time, the faithful demanded the traditional family model promoted by the Church, as opposed to homosexual marriage demanded by members of the LGBTI community.
Last week, after Article 68 of the constitutional text was eliminated, several groups of evangelicals publicly congratulated themselves and announced their intention to mobilize against the Government’s project to include, within two years, that same concept in the Family Code.
“The news that the National Assembly of People’s Power rejected the proposal of Article 68, because it was shown that a majority of the population of Cuba rejected it, is a measure of how much the thought of the Evangelical Church of Cuba represents the Cuban People,” the Methodist Church said on its Facebook page.
For its part, the Assembly of God was one of the five evangelical denominations that signed a declaration against equal marriage last July. In the document they asserted that the “gender ideology” does not have any relation with Cuban culture “nor with the historical leaders of the Revolution.”
At that time, these five congregations, which are not within the Cuban Council of Churches, also requested permission from the Government to carry out a march along La Rampa, a major street in Havana, from the corner of 23rd and L to the Malecón, but this request was rejected by the authorities.
The congregation of the Assembly of God that held a pilgrimage this December 25 has more than 2,000 faithful who frequently attend the services and is led by the pastor José García, a native of the town of Baracoa.
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