Castro:

Fidel Castro apologized this week for his regime’s treatment of gays in Cuba. “If someone is responsible, it’s me,” Castro told journalist Carmen Lida Saade about his country’s campaign to “re-educate” the country’s gay population in the 1960s. Well into the 1980s, gays in Cuba were sent off to labor camps and thought to be counter revolutionary “agents of imperialism.”

“Yes, there were moments of great injustice — great injustice,” Castro acknowledged about the 1960s. And then, by way of a justification for the policies, he said that he was also dealing with death threats and the turmoil of the revolution at the time: “We had so many terrible problems, problems of life or death, you know, you do not pay enough attention.”

When pressed though, Castro relented, and reminded the reporter that he had many close gay friends. “I am trying to narrow my responsibility in all of this, because of course personally I have no such prejudice,” he said.

Note how this comment is infinitely more informative than "yeah they're just homophobic."