To: Ecclesiastical Authorities
Of the Episcopal Anglican Church
The letter I am writing to you today also will be published on different websites and in different media. It exposes the ruse used by the Episcopal Anglican Church of Havana Cuba in order to silence a marriage application sent in the month of November of last year, 2011.
The letter was received by the personal assistant to the Bishop Griselda Delgado, who signed and stamped the letter with a handwritten signature and the date of receiving the letter. In this letter we communicated to the Cuban Anglican church authorities the reasons why my wife Wendy Iriepa Díaz and I, Ignacio Estrada Cepero, requested to be married. The letter has been in the office of the Bishop since that time with no response.
My wife Wendy Iriepa Diaz is a transsexual woman, and because of that she and I were able to be married last year before a civil notary in Havana. If my wife had not been legally recognized as a woman our marriage never would have been possible. Taking this into account we asked this church in Havana to celebrate our wedding, only wanting to unite in holy matrimony.
After giving the letter in which, apart from marriage, we asked for an interview with the bishop, I have often gone to the headquarters of the church in Havana always receiving negative and evasive answers. Sometimes the personal assistant to the bishop lied to me, denying the bishop was in Cuba and saying he was traveling outside the capital.
Yesterday the assistant said, through another person, that again the bishop was not in Havana. I said that today I would be revealing the way I had been treated and was told it wouldn’t do any good.
With this letter I publicly accuse the authorities of the Anglican Episcopal Church in Havana Cuba of becoming accomplices of the Cuban government and its political authorities to silence our marriage and of trying to hide the letter in which we asked for this union.
Apparently the Anglican Episcopal Church of Havana and its authorities prefer to sit at the table of our leaders and ask for the release of five men imprisoned in the U.S. on charges of espionage, moments which are constantly transmitted on television. The Cuban Anglican Episcopal Church has to respond before the world regarding why it will not allow this union between those who before any authority in the world are man and woman.
The Anglican Episcopal Church of Havana, Cuba has the lead role to erase the old historical concepts that the church continues to be governed by homophobic people and only serve the interests of powerful rulers.
As was said before in the Letter I am writing today, I publicly and before the world accuse the church leaders of the Anglican Episcopal Church of this church in Havana, Cuba, of being accomplices of the Cuban State and its interests to silence the request for our marriage.
The Anglican Episcopal Church in Havana is obliged to respond to the world for this mockery and complicity with a government, stained with innocent blood and marked by the stigma of homophobia.
Wendy Diaz and Ignacio Estrada Iriepa Cepero
(53) 5317 3339
estradacepero@yahoo.es
We enclose a copy of the letter submitted previously to the Secretary of the Bishop in Havana.
CC. To the news media.
February 13 2012
