HAVANA – Cuba's gay community celebrated unprecedented openness – and high-ranking political alliances – with a government-backed campaign against homophobia on Saturday.

The meeting at a convention centre in Havana's Vedado district may have been the largest gathering of openly gay activists ever on the communist-run island. President Raul Castro's daughter Mariela, who has promoted the rights of sexual minorities, presided.

Mariela Castro joined government leaders and hundreds of activists at the one-day conference for the International Day Against Homophobia that featured shows, lectures, panel discussions, book presentations and blood tests for sexually transmitted diseases.

Cuban state television gave prime-time play Friday to the American film Brokeback Mountain that tells the story of two cowboys who concealtheir homosexual affair.

Prejudice against gays remains deeply rooted in Cuban society, but the government has steadily moved away from the puritanism of the 1960s and 1970s, when homosexuals hid their sexuality for fear of being ridiculed, fired from work or even imprisoned. (AP)