Cubans went to the polls on Sunday to vote in a landmark referendum on whether to legalize same-sex marriage and adoption, allow surrogacy and give more rights to non-birth parents.

President Miguel Diaz-Canel and his wife cast their votes early at a polling station in Havana in what he says is a necessary overhaul of the country’s 1975 Family Code.

The new code, he told reporters, “is a fair, necessary, up-to-date, modern norm that gives rights and guarantees to all people, to all diversity of families, people and creeds.”

Cubans 16 and older are asked to simply vote “yes” or “no” to the question, “Do you agree with the Family Code?”

The updated code would represent a major change in a country where machismo runs high and where authorities sent homosexuals to militarized labor camps in the 1960s and 1970s.

Since then, official attitudes have changed and the government has conducted an intense media campaign in favor of the new code.

But the referendum comes amid the country’s worst economic crisis in 30 years and could offer some voters an opportunity to speak out against the government.

The law needs more than 50 percent of the vote to pass, and dissidents have urged citizens to reject the code or abstain from voting.

If adopted, the new code would allow surrogacy as long as no money changes hands, while strengthening the rights of children, the elderly and the disabled.

Significantly, it would define marriage as the union between two people rather than that of a man and a woman.

“We do not vote ‘yes’ with the PCC (Communist Party of Cuba),” stressed Maykel Gonzalez, a gay activist, on Twitter. “It is the PCC that votes ‘yes’ with us.”

Several Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica and Ecuador, as well as some Mexican states – now recognize same-sex marriages.

A 2019 attempt by Havana to join this group fell short under heavy criticism from church leaders.

This month, the Cuban Conference of Catholic Bishops announced its stance against several items in the new code, including surrogacy and adoption by same-sex couples.

But many Cubans say they now support such ideas.

“A few years ago I would not have accepted this code,” 78-year-old Elio Gomez, a former Marxism teacher, told AFP at a polling station in Havana. “But you have to keep up. It’s a very human code, totally inclusive.”

“I’m a Christian, I have different ideas, I don’t accept that,” said Zulika Corso, 65, a teacher.

The code’s wide reach, including nearly 500 articles, raised doubts among some, who said they agreed with, for example, same-sex marriage but not surrogacy.

The code was the subject of months of intense debate across Cuba.

Yet political scientist Rafael Hernandez called it the “most important human rights legislation” there since the 1959 revolution.

Cuba is now experiencing a severe economic crisis – with food, fuel and medicine shortages – exacerbated by US sanctions and a collapse in tourism due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Experts say voters could use this opportunity to voice their broad disapproval of the government.

“There are many other issues that are more important than the family code, like the fact that there is no food, that many people are starving,” concierge Julio Cesar Vazquez told AFP.

Polling stations close at 18:00 local time (2200 GMT).