Ecuador President appoints lesbian to cabinet

Carina Vance Mafla, a lesbian, is Ecuador's new Health Minister. (photo courtesy of the Government of Ecuador)

Announcing her presence with a major gesture with the closure of ex-gay torture clinics, Ecuador’s new American born Health Minister has been revealed to be an openly gay woman who led the charge against those clinics since 2008.

According to LGBT Latino news blog, Blabbeando, Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa announced Wednesday the appointment of Carina Vance Mafla as the replacement of outgoing Health Minister, who resigned earlier this month over charges that he’d left the health system to languish without proper modernization efforts. Mafla was born in California, but spent her high school years in Ecuador, and returned after college and graduate school in 2004.

Yesterday, the nation’s most prominent LGBT organization brought attention to Mafla’s sexual orientation by heralding her as a “lesbian activist.”

According to the Blabbeando translation, “the organization goes on to say that they hope the newly appointed minister will pay attention to current delays in the distribution of HIV medications, create guidelines to prevent discrimination against LGBT individuals at hospitals and health centers and take action on shutting down illegal religious “clinics” that promote “cures” for homosexuality.”