As I understand it, they were heavily propagandized into voting for it, and that's a good thing. They government laid out the reasons why the change was necessary and did the work to educate the electorate on why it was important. Only after they were relatively certain it would pass did the government call for the referendum. This is the perfect way to do social engineering, imo.
One person's "propaganda" is another person's "education". This referendum started at the higher levels of the Party but the referendum process was lead by the People's Committees, neighborhood-tier political organizations all across the island, and I don't think it's accurate to describe this process as though it was some ivory tower elites educating the dumb populace about gay people.
As I understand it, they were heavily propagandized into voting for it, and that's a good thing. They government laid out the reasons why the change was necessary and did the work to educate the electorate on why it was important. Only after they were relatively certain it would pass did the government call for the referendum. This is the perfect way to do social engineering, imo.
One person's "propaganda" is another person's "education". This referendum started at the higher levels of the Party but the referendum process was lead by the People's Committees, neighborhood-tier political organizations all across the island, and I don't think it's accurate to describe this process as though it was some ivory tower elites educating the dumb populace about gay people.
Wasn't implying that the populace was dumb, at all. It takes an intelligent person to keep an open mind.