Argentina is well ahead of VZ on that issue.

And they would have included full constitutional protections, but the opposition of the Catholic hierarchy stopped them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_Venezuela

Capriles was never pro-gay-"free market" types aren't.

Did you even hear the words coming out of Chavez's mouth? Did you even click on the link and hear what the man was saying? What his "opinion"--and we know his opinions controlled the masses--was with regard to rights for gay people?

Capriles, some say, IS gay--so who knows what he might have done. It's not ABOUT him, though. He didn't win the last election, he isn't a leader of anything resembling a "unified" opposition, and for the time being, the fight is between two of Chavez's crony-elites, both of whom want his mantle and access to all that oil money. Cuba is no doubt VERY interested in who will win that prize.

This is not an either-or exercise, pick one or the other, and I don't care to make it so.

This conversation is about what a "swell" equal rights guy Chavez was. And he wasn't--not if you're gay. Oh, and not if you are a woman, either. Venezuela has some of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the world. "Life of the mother" only--otherwise, the pregnant woman looking to terminate has to go the "back alley" routine, and if she's caught, she's PUNISHED.

Yeah, a real "Equal Rights" guy, that Chavez--just don't be gay or female!

And for you to infer that he was hiding behind the skirts of the priests as an "excuse" for his pisspoor attitudes? That just makes it all the worse for him, because he has placed himself in the last refuge of a mendacious scoundrel.

If you're out of The Chavez orbit, a person that he has a poor "opinion" about--like, say, a gay person--or a woman wishing to terminate a pregnancy--you're shit outta luck in Worker's Paradise Venezuela. Move to Argentina! There you can marry if you are gay, adopt children, and be a full and unfettered member of society, and not have to learn a new language. If you want reproductive rights to go along with the right of gays to marry, go to Uruguay! A shorter trip, certainly, and they aren't afraid of equality there.

And the abortion law is down to the power of the Church...we can assume that Capriles wouldn't defy the Catholic hierarchy on either of those, because non-leftists don't ever defy that hierarchy.

And you'll never have a situation in which a swing to the right in government is better for women and gays, because only the Left fights for women and gays...centrists don't.

ANYWHERE in the country. In the US, we may be inefficiently going state by state, but at least the trajectory is in the right direction. If our law was truly worse, we'd outlaw marriage equality from sea to shining sea. Same with adoption.

NO WHERE in VZ can a gay couple adopt a child--yet you say they have "better federal law" like that's supposed to make it all better? Please.

And the power of the church? Come off it. The church had the power Chavez chose to grant it. If he had decided to go the way of Cuba, which provides full family planning services, without batting an eye, and tells the church to stuff it, they aren't dictating shit, he could have gotten on one of his five hour tee vee shows and said that "The Pope is a decent guy but he's out of step on this issue" --and his followers would go along.

The Vatican would go along, too, and just elect to not say much, too loudly if he crossed their palms with lots of pedophile-hush-money/lawer-fees Black Gold.

Why do you keep arguing "a swing to the right?" YOU are the only person in this thread who sees that as a possibility, at least in the near term.

It's down to two people, as I said--Old God Given Hair or the Bus Driver. BOTH are Chavistas. No one else has a hope in hell, at least not soon.

Again, to restate--Venezuela sucks for gay people and women who want the right to choose.

It would only be valid to say that they were if things had been BETTER for gays and women in Venezuela BEFORE Chavez came to power...and they were never good for either of those groups prior to that.

NO pre-Chavez government ever did anything feminist in Venezuela, or anything pro-gay-and that's the standard that we need to judge Chavez's party on these issues by. The PSUV is not UNIQUELY anti-gay or anti-woman...gays and women didn't lose ground under Chavez. And none of the anti-Chavez presidential candidates EVER promised to do more for gays and women than Chavez did...thus, it's bogus to use feminism and LGBT rights to demonize the Chavez era. OK?

BTW, the opposition governors that were elected during the Chavez era COULD have passed pro-LGBT legislation in their own states in Venezuela...yet none ever did. And, to my knowledge, none of you anti-Chavez types ever called THEM out for not doing so. Weren't you obligated to do that?

BTW, it's silly to make an issue of the fact that one of the presidential candidates' names translates as "God Given Hair'. A name is just a name...it's not like he gave himself that name. Grow up, already.

And now you're saying that because governments before Chavez didn't do anything "feminist" or "pro-gay" in VZ, that makes it "OK" that he didn't?

Obama managed to step up, and he had a real opposition to contend with. Chavez had the power to ram any law through that he desired, to jail people at will--he owned the legislature and the judiciary....so why didn't he do the right thing?

The answer is in that video--he was biased against gays. Just his "opinion" of course....


And, "BTW" if Chavez decided to pass a federal law that would make choice the law of the land (that's not a "feminist" issue--it is a human rights issue) or marriage equality (another human rights issue) the law of the land, the objections of governors become moot. He didn't step up. He didn't WANT to step up.

As that video points out.

Why is OK for Chavez to talk like a bigoted Republican? Why no censure, no scorn? Talk about situational forgiveness.

I guess it's OK to be against women's/gay rights if your name is Chavez. OK...got it!

I You just need to understand that these attitudes he held are NOT progressive. Not in this century. He was a neanderthal until the day he died when it came to rights for women and gays.

I think "God Given Hair" is a hair-larious name and worthy of at least one joke a day. He should switch names with Donald Trump...they both probably have about the same amount of cash stashed offshore.

And, at the time of his death, he was talking about working once again TO get constitutional protections in place(protections we don't have here and likely won't ever have).

Chavez could have done more, but you make it sound like Chavez actually made life WORSE for gays and women in Venezuela. He didn't...and you should be aware of the fact that, in significant measure, the "Chavez not pro-gay enough" line was basically a right-wing propaganda meme designed to make people pretend that it was "progressive" to want Chavez and his party knocked out of power(when Chavez wasn't ever going to be replaced by anyone who wasn't worse on all major issues).

Also Chavez had a lot of work on his hands fighting to reduce poverty in Venezuela...clearly, you'd have to put helping the poor get a decent life a bit above LGBT on the Left priority sheet. You end the misery of the poor first...then you create perfect justice. The most suffering had to be helped first. Since Obama doesn't care about the poor(nothing of what he believed in as a "community organizer" survives in his policies as president, as his support for corporate trade deals proves), he had a bit more time to help with rights issues. It would have been wrong for Chavez to put the poor second to LGBT people and women.

And our lack of a federal anti-discrimination law(something that's never going to be passed here)and the continued survival of DOMA prove that the U.S., on the federal level, has no right to judge Venezuela on LGBT issues.

Venezuela should be better for gays and women, but the way to deal with that is to lobby the government there to change things...NOT to declare the government illegitimate and demand that it be knocked out of power.

Finally, if Capriles had won this fall(or if any of the other non-Chavistas had won in the prior elections)you'd be saying nothing at all about LGBT and women's issues in Venezuela, even though the situation would be unchanged no matter who had won. LGBT people NEVER benefit from the election of a new government that's to the right of a previous government on ANY issues. ANY swing to the right always means that LGBT and women's issues are gonna be ignored.

them? He had a decade and a half to do the right thing--and he didn't take it.

If the EXACT same hateful shit Chavez said about gay people came out of Boehner's mouth, it would be a cause celebre here on DU.

He did make it worse--he had the power, he had an unfettered majority and ruled like a dictator with no viable opposition. He owned the judiciary and the legislature. He even changed the Constitution in hazardous fashion, and persuaded the poor on the dole to ratify based solely on his personality--not on the efficacy of the changes over the long haul.

Chavez does not deserve a pass on this issue. If Uruguay can step up, WTF is wrong with Venezuela, save Chavez's "opinion" about how he feels about "the homosexuals?" Never mind his refusal to grant full rights to women, and that's a nasty legacy, too.

Anti-women, anti-gay....that's his legacy, after you step back from all the free cell phones, Cuban doctors for everyone, money for nothing, food subsidies, crazed market manipulation that produced insane inflation and a strangled money supply,, nationalizing every business in sight and running half of them into the ground. His model is not sustainable, and whichever crony manages to grab the crown will be the one to reap the shit from his inefficient and non-inclusive policies.

And it's right-wing to use gay rights and women's issues as a battering ram against a government that created social equality.
You help the suffering, the starving, and THEN you deal with rights issues, because rights issues aren't issues of human survival or issues that involve the poor all that much.

And the only way to produce a just economy is to do something like nationalization...private sector companies(other than co-ops)can't be the dominant part of a socially just economy...and neither can fiscal conservatism.

You just tipped your hand in that last paragraph as being a total DLC neoliberal. You don't care about the poor and social inequality is nothing to you. If it did, you wouldn't be a "market values" supporter, since market values are always the enemy of the poor.

I get the feeling that, if Chavez had carried out Bill Clinton's domestic policies(sort of help women and gays, leave the poor to die)that you'd see that as an improvement.

And what difference does it make if the doctors were Cuban? Does that matter any more? It's not like this is still 1962, for God's sakes...it doesn't matter if Cuba "wins one" somewhere. There's no excuse for anyone other than a right-wing Republican to be obsessively opposed to the Cuban Revolution anymore...Cuba is just another country, and it made the choice its people wanted it to make.

--pardon the expression--STRAIGHT face!

His government DENIED social equality to women and gays. That's the bottom line.


He managed to walk and chew gum at the same time on a variety of issues--these issues wouldn't have required any "work" -- they would have required that he spend a few minutes talking about them and selling them to his acolytes on his long-winded TV shows. Maybe sing one fewer song, and instead, tell the people why women need reproductive rights and why gays should have marriage equality.

That is all he had to do. He didn't do it. Why? HE DIDN'T back it.

Stop pulling out the right wing bullshit lines--the significance in "Cuban" doctors is that VZ isn't producing their OWN doctors to take care of their population--not a "right wing" thing. They are trading those doctors for oil.


Look to Uruguay--what magic wand did they have to manage walking and chewing gum at the same time? Please, your arguments are not arguments--they're lame excuses. You are JUSTIFYING Chavez's bigotry because you don't want to acknowledge that El Commandante was a prejudiced bigot who was anti-women's rights and anti-gay rights.

That's how he lived, and that's how he died.

Alex Main: American "Mainstream" media accuses Chavez of leaving Venezuela "divided and polarized", but Venezuela is not divided over Chavez's personality, it's whether oil wealth will go to the people or the elite
#!

they wont.

Here's hoping we don't have another Pinochet.

They are already providing plenty of military assistance and security, never mind the network of doctors, nurses and technical professional spread throughout the country, so they are already well positioned.

Will they choose to back the easily managed bus driver, Nicolas Maduro, or the more politically savvy, and some say quite ruthless (and perhaps more dangerous for that reason) Diosdado Cabello (God-given Hair, translated literally)?

They have a lot to lose--like 20 percent of their economy--if Venezuela slips from their orbit.

The "opposition"--such as it is--barely managed to stay unified through the election. They aren't the biggest concern to the Chavez legacy, at least not immediately-- nor are the "Americans"--the players fighting over the crown (and the Cubans) are.

then I think that Venezuela is the great Democratic socialist experiment. Sadly the capitalists have taken every oportunity to
destroy the Venezuelan experiment. I fear that with Chavez gone American interference will increase. Venezuela has so much oil that the elite will not be able to resist.
I pray for the success of the democratic socialist experiment. So many impoverished have been helped, not so in "our" experiment.
R.I.P. Hugo and thank you for humanity.