New code also would allow surrogate pregnancies, broader rights for grandparents and measures against gender violence.
Cubans have overwhelmingly approved a sweeping “family law” that would allow same-sex couples to marry and adopt, the electoral commission said, in a move that will also redefine rights for children and grandparents.
More than 3.9 million voters – 66.9 percent – voted to ratify the new code while 1.95 million or 33 percent were opposed, National Electoral Council President Alina Balseiro Gutierrez said on state-run television on Monday.
The 100-page “family code” legalises same-sex marriage and civil unions, allows same-sex couples to adopt children, and promotes equal sharing of domestic rights and responsibilities between men and women.
Preliminary results from the electoral commission showed 74 percent of 8.4 million Cubans eligible to vote participated in the Sunday referendum.
“Love is now the law,” President Miguel Diaz-Canel wrote on Twitter on Monday morning.
“It is paying off a debt with several generations of Cuban men and women, whose family projects have been waiting for this law for years,” he said. “As of today, we will be a better nation.”
