Oh No Christian Council!

The clergy from L to R: Rev. Nana Anyani Boadum, Apostle Dr. Opoku Onyina, Rev. Dr. Fred Deegbe, Rt. Rev. Professor Emmanuel Martey and Rt. Rev. Matthias Modedues-Badohu

The Christian Council of Ghana has, not unexpectedly, also jumped into the homosexuality debate. And with politicians doing same, the fate of freedoms, as enshrined in the Constitution, could not have been more threatened.

Those with this unique trait, homosexuals and lesbians, are almost on the verge of having their preferences denied them and risk being ostracized.

We are for the continuation of a healthy debate on a subject which has existed with man for ages, cutting across national, religious, gender and ethnic boundaries.

The issue at stake is not about a crime, no; it concerns a reality which we need not play ostrich about as some have resorted to.

Religious personalities from various faiths are involved in the arguably strange preference.

The press conference organized by the Christian Council of Ghana to express their sentiments on the issue portends a serious challenge to the future of the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms about which we have often spoken and vowed to defend at all cost.

Are we witnessing the restoration of the Middle Ages period of Inquisition when those found guilty of heresy under the infallible Roman Empire were condemned and excommunicated from the Church? In a secular state, run strictly according to the tenets of the Constitution, this cannot be tenable, regardless of how much propagandists are busily playing to the gallery of their masters, politicians at the helm.

Need we allow such an aberration as we turn our backs on a healthy and open debate on the subject?

Lest we be misunderstood, (but we will risk it), we do not for a moment ask for or advocate its mass approval. But we will for sure dare say that, lesbians and homosexuals, wherever they find themselves, have the right to be protected under Ghana's constitution.

The debate, therefore, must be encouraged, and those with unusual traits be heard and considered as compatriots with equal rights as others.

Which sex should be our partners', really, is a matter for the individual to decide upon and any attempt to usurp the exercise of such a preference is crossing the red line of our fundamental rights.

It is a subject which has gained an unusual currency, putting the Constitution under a real litmus test in our political history.

With such a powerful constitution at our disposal, intended to protect us from the arbitrariness of governments and others, all of us must be able to muster the courage to be accommodating of others' preferences.

It all started when a group of cowardly journalists, senior ones for that matter, threw up, rightly, the subject on the pages of their newspapers and yet took cover behind the screen, leaving the editor of the state-owned newspaper, then outside the country, to take the flak from politicians with a hidden agenda, as though he originated it.

Today, the subject has transcended normalcy, mutating into a monster ready to devour the spirit of our Constitution if we allow it.

We would resist any attempt at slamming the door on the debate and take on headlong pro-NDC youth and newspapers who have found in it a fertile ground for the perpetuation of their game-plan. Like the cocaine mantra, this one too has become a political issue, with political groupings unfortunately being compelled, to take a partisan position on it.

Against the backdrop of the foregone, we think that the subject risks being usurped by religious extremists, fundamentalists and hardliners and politicians for the advancement of their myopic and narrow interests and goals.

We must all stand up to defend our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms so that each one of us can decide which social, economic and even religious path to traverse, regardless of the sentiments of others. This, after all, is tolerance and social accommodation, the cornerstone of a civil society.

It is within this context that we deem it regrettable that Fred Deegbe and Christian Council of Ghana are making the gay issue a political matter.