CARACAS, Venezuela — On an early morning in 2013, a soldier alerted a supervisor that a comrade had left his post. He had seen him getting into a red car with a man “who looked gay,” prosecutors said in court documents.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
A sergeant rushed to the car, ordered the soldier to return to his post and grabbed the other man’s ID card. Officials later collected forensic evidence from the scene and ordered the soldier to lower his pants, looking for proof that the two men had had sex.
The soldier was convicted of abandonment of service and “sexual acts against nature.” He was sentenced to almost two years in prison and banned from the military for life. The prosecutor, who repeatedly quoted soldiers using derogatory words for gay men, deemed his actions as “dishonorable,” “unseemly” and “unworthy” of the military.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Nearly a decade after that arrest, and more than 10 years after the United States repealed its “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Venezuela continues to prohibit gay sexual activity between service members, punishable by one to three years in prison. The article in the military code of justice makes the socialist nation one of the last countries in Latin America to criminalize homosexuality.
Now, for the first time, Venezuela’s highest court has announced it will weigh the constitutionality of the law. The decision of the Supreme Court of Justice comes five years after the advocacy group Egalitarian Venezuela filed a lawsuit asking it to repeal the provision.
“It’s a fight for a social transformation,” said Giovanni Piermattei, the organization’s president, “that perhaps we will eliminate that stigma, the belief that we’re less male, less female or less courageous.”
A decade after ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,” LGBTQ veterans say they still feel the effects
Egalitarian Venezuela launched the action in 2016 after finding the article in a section of the code under the heading “cowardice and other crimes against military decorum.”
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Problems with the country’s judicial database in the years since, amid the country’s economic collapse, make it difficult to know how many people have faced criminal charges or jail time. But lawyers and advocates say members of the armed forces received criminal sentences for gay activity until 2016.
Court documents publicly identify gay service members by name, identification number and address. They describe invasive medical exams to determine whether suspects had sex.
In the 2013 case of the soldier caught in the red car in Miranda state, prosecutors quote a course book on Venezuelan military criminal law, which itself cites a 1951 U.S. Senate report entitled “Employment of homosexuals and other sexual perverts by the Government.” A Senate subcommittee, writing during the Cold War effort to crack down on U.S. federal employees suspected of being gay, argued that gay people and “other sex perverts” are “generally unsuitable” for employment and “constitute security risks.”
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
Repealing the article from the military’s code of justice would mean the end of penalization of LGBTQ people in Venezuela, said José Manuel Simons, one of the lawyers who brought the case in 2016.
“It would tell a lot of people it’s not against nature, it’s not a sin to be LGBT,” Simons said. “And any person, even if you don’t like the military … can participate and form a part of the state without feeling that they’ll be discriminated against for being who they are.”
It would also send a powerful message in a country that has been highly militarized since the rise of paratrooper-turned-strongman Hugo Chávez, and where the armed forces continue to wield far-reaching authority. Under President Nicolás Maduro, Chávez’s successor, key sectors of the country’s crumbling economy have fallen under control of the military, which now manages the distribution of food and raw materials and the national oil company.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
“The majority of political forces are now related to the armed forces,” Simons said. “If the armed forces don’t allow LGBT people … this discrimination is going to repeat itself.”
Representatives from Venezuela’s military did not respond to a request for comment. The law continues to receive support from some conservative members of Venezuela’s Congress.
“I think we must preserve the values that have until now maintained our armed forces … those that have to do with moral character,” said Javier Bertucci, an evangelical pastor and former presidential candidate. “The preferences of a minority shouldn’t be imposed on the majority.”
In September, the National Assembly reformed the military code, banning trials of civilians by military criminal courts. But the assembly, the majority of which supports Maduro, left the “sexual acts against nature” article untouched.
Advertisement
Story continues below advertisement
The judicial system has been asked to weigh the issue before, according to a person with direct knowledge of the case, but it has declined because many judges fear going against the powerful military elite.
“Their power relies on the absolute control of weapons and the sources of illegal and legal economy in the country,” said Rocío San Miguel, a military analyst based in Caracas.
Some gay former service members told The Washington Post their families pressured them to enlist as a form of conversion therapy. They say they joined an institution that made it clear people like them were not welcome. Some were kicked out. Others chose to leave, fed up with a culture of homophobia and harassment or threatened with criminal charges.
Story continues below advertisement
“My mom always felt that what I had was a mental problem,” said Juan, a former member of Venezuela’s National Guard in Caracas. He spoke on the condition that his last name be withheld out of fear he might still be charged.
Advertisement
Juan’s mother hoped the military could change him, he said. After joining the National Guard at 17, he kept his identity a secret for a dozen years — until his supervisors started having suspicions. At one point, a fellow service member told Juan he had been ordered to investigate whether he was gay. The investigator admitted that he, too, was gay.
When Juan was ordered to report to a prosecutor’s office for questioning, he fled the country.
Story continues below advertisement
When Alexander álvarez joined the army in 2018, he also kept his sexuality private. But after a female soldier pursued him romantically, he confided the reason he wasn’t interested. Then one night during roll call, the woman blurted out to all assembled that álvarez was gay.
A commander called álvarez into his office and told him he could leave the army, if he wanted. “He told me that with this condition, I couldn’t be there,” said álvarez, now 21.
Advertisement
álvarez chose to stay, to prove to his commanders and fellow soldiers that he wouldn’t buckle to their pressure — “that even though I was gay I could endure the same as them,” he said. “I was still a man.”
Story continues below advertisement
But for the next six months, he said, he was constantly bullied. His supervisors would hover behind him at meal times, refusing to let him eat. His fellow soldiers stole his food and hid his belongings. Ultimately, he decided to leave — and to flee the country for Colombia.
Yeremi Moreno, now a chef in Spain, said she felt constant discrimination for being gay, and pressure to tell her superiors if others in her battalion were gay. A supervisor said she had to, Moreno said, “because they couldn’t allow gay people in the armed forces.”
Moreno said she was prevented from eating with the rest of the troops. Instead, she was isolated in a different room. She was followed on her days off by service members who took pictures of her in gay bars. After one night out, she was detained for 72 hours. She retired from the military a decade ago, shortly after coming out.
Advertisement
Amelia Valecillos joined the army when she was 16 in the hopes of starting a stable career. The military, she said, made her feel like she was “capable of achieving something good.”
She ended up falling in love with a female comrade. They exchanged love letters; she hid the notes in her closet.
Her commanders discovered the relationship. They pressured her to confess she was a lesbian by threatening to tell her family. She would be awakened in the middle of the night and forced to stand until dawn. Sometimes she went a week without any sleep. “That’s what you get for being a dyke,” they told her.
After months of pressure, in 2005, she was sent home. She never heard from the other woman again.
“I just learned that she was kicked out like me,” Valecillos said, “for the same reason.”
Read more:
E.U. observers say Venezuelan elections show major improvement, but uneven playing field remains
Venezuelan elections are missing a key voice: Women
‘Super Mustache’: Venezuela’s newest superhero battles Americans — and looks very familiar