I've been following the situation in Cuba pretty closely for 3 years, long enough to observe animated public debate over LGBTQ equality. While Cuban voters may be wary of opposing government positions on some matters, they've shown little apparent timidity about this one.

Debates have been frequent, energetic, and free-wheeling. I think it's safe to say that the wide margin this proposal won by is a fairly accurate representation of public sentiment.

One of the reasons why this may be so comes back to the religious observation you made. It's true that's 60% of the Cuban population identify as Catholics, but ...

From what I've been able to read, the bulk of them are "cradle Catholics" with little connection to the Church other than a baptismal certificate. This reminds me of the situation in Quebec, where the vast majority of people practice no religion and don't consider themselves to be Christians. Yet if you look at government demographic figures, you'll see that Quebec is listed as a Catholic majority province. Anyone who's ever lived there could tell you how ridiculous that is.

Cuba is in a similar situation.

Then we come to the other religious element. There actually is a growing religiosity among a small but significant minority of Cubans ... who worship in Evangelical Protestant congregations that are offshoots of conservative American churches and denominations.

For years, fierce opposition to LGBTQ equality has come from Evangelical Cubans and not from most other Cubans. I've read that a very significant percentage of the Cuban population resent these American-style churches.

Something a lot of Americans fail to appreciate, having grown up hearing Cuba demonized by our politicians, it is that Cuban people tend to be very proud of their country and its accomplishments. They're proud to live in a fairly equitable society with universal literacy, excellent medical care, and little to no hunger. They consider themselves to be (and by many measures they are) an outlier of excellence in the region.

They tend to resent American political and cultural hostility toward the Cuban government, especially trade and travel restrictions, which they quite rightly observe punish them harshly even though Cuban respect for human rights is far higher than that of many strong U.S. allies.

Saudi Arabia, for example, treats women as virtual slaves, and is led by a man who murders his political opponents. But we don't have a trade embargo on Saudi Arabia, do we?

Or on Hungary, or ... I could go on for paragraphs.

So, when the Cuban people as a whole are presented with a proposal that American-style Evangelical churches (allied with the U.S. political right that insists on treating Cuba like dirt) fiercely oppose, what happens is partly a proxy fight.

Cubans didn't just overwhelmingly approve a proposal to treat LGBTQ people equitably, they voted their disapproval of what they see as creeping American Christian cultural hegemony.

Looked at that way, the result of the vote is rather more expected than suspect.