Whoever Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

LGBTQI social or civic acceptance is absolutely nonnegotiable; it is an integral part of the globally sanctioned fundamental human rights conventions. So, it is not clear to me why some Ghanaians think and believe that, somehow, it is tantamount to an illegal imposition or interference on the integrity of a Sovereign Democratic Republic or Nation, for that matter, for US President Joseph “Joe” Robinette Biden to insist that any country that accepts any material and/or financial assistance from the United States is obligated to protect the human rights of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transsexuals and Intersexual people (See “David Kankam Boadu Writes: Should Ghana Accept Gay and Lesbian Laws by US President?” Modernghana.com 2/19/2021).

Absolutely nobody or leader of any global superpower is forcing Ghana or any anti-LGBTQI nation on Earth to scrap laws proscribing the universal rights of humans of the latter sexual orientation or community to summarily rescind the same. What America’s neoliberal Democratic Party leader is saying, and rightly so, is that if Ghana, among a host of other anti-LGBTQI nations, wants the United States of America to continue providing it with economic and technical assistance, the way that the United States has been doing for decades, then it is imperative for the would-be-recipient of such assistance to follow the rules of Global Human Rights Conventions in toto. We have absolutely no right to expect Americans to accept our legal proscription of the fundamental rights of non-heterosexual people. At any rate, the 1860 Gold Coast Law prohibiting homosexual practices that the author of the afore-referenced article alludes to was crafted and promulgated by the erstwhile British Colonial Government for the Gold Coast Colony which, by the way, did not include the Asante Confederation, today’s Asante, Bono and Ahafo regions, at the time known as Western Asante, and the Northern Territories, that is, today’s Five Northern Regions.

What is even more significant to point out here is the fact that even as I write, Westminster, or the British Government, fully recognizes the fundamental rights of the members of the so-called Queer Community. So, really, sophistically invoking the Gold Coast Law of 1860 only poignantly defeats the argument of Mr. Kankam Boadu. As well must be incontrovertibly recognized the fact that neither Homosexuality nor Polygyny – the more appropriate terminology for male-centered polygamy – are accepted in early Judaic/Judahite Culture. For example, in the Creation Story, Divine Providence or God did not create Adam and more than one Eve or wife. It does clearly, therefore, appear that the sort of polygamy or multiple acquisition of wives that the critic claims to be integral to African cultures did not exist at the very beginning of human existence. So, Mr. Kankam Boadu’s argument may not be as sound as the pontifical and self-righteous critic supposes.

In any event, the greatest problem facing Ghanaians right now is a woeful lack or dearth of creative, progressive and responsible leadership. Our youths need jobs and other postindustrial professional training opportunities and the sort of creative-thinking skills that will enable them to create their own jobs for their respective communities, and not rely on such foreign handouts as Mr. Kankam Boadu laughably supposes homophobic Ghanaian citizens to be entitled to receive from the Americans. If Ghanaians are not interested in protecting the fundamental human rights of members of the Gay and Lesbian or Queer Community, then they simply have to accept the terms offered them by the Biden Administration. It is also absurd for the critic to pose the following rather scandalously shallow question: “How do you expect we… Ghanaian Heterosexuals to feel, when we make Babies with our wives but when our children grow [up?] they are influenced and used for [the] sexual pleasure of Homosexuals?”

This is a rather silly and intellectually embarrassing question to ask. For instance, is the critic hereby implying that today’s adult homosexuals were birthed by homosexual and lesbian parents? Mr. Kankam Boadu would be better off educating himself about the origins and causes of homosexuality and the existential implications of the same. Does Mr. Kankam Boadu, for instance, suppose that Homosexuals are masochists who pleasure in being constantly harassed and persecuted by the larger Heterosexual community? Is the critic also aware that but for acute social pressures and hostilities, far more LGBTQI people would have come out of the closet than happens to be presently the case? The critic only needs to Google “World’s Homosexuals of Genius” or “Great and Famous Homosexuals.” If he does, he will discover to his great surprise and utter shame and embarrassment that at least 40-percent of the world’s greatest achieving humans are gay. This reality ought to inform this virulently homophobic critic that gays and lesbians are not the stereotypical cultural or sexual minority that he seems to think and believe.

How about “heterosexual” people like the critic himself who practice oral and anal sex and fellatio with their spouses and mistresses, as the great late internationally renowned gynecologist Prof. Sai once instructively cautioned morally self-righteous Ghanaians like Mr. Kankam Boadu to be careful and modest enough not to be rash and judgmental?

*Visit my blog at: KwameOkoampaAhoofeJr

By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD

English Department, SUNY-Nassau

Garden City, New York

February 19, 2021

E-mail: [email protected]