Does Ghana Need LGTBQ+ Law?

On Wednesday July 5, 2023 the Parliament of Ghana passed a bill, which is set to tighten laws against members of the LGBTQ+ community. Ghana’s 275 members of Parliament unanimously passed the bill, known as the 2021 Promotion of Appropriate Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill. The bill is set to criminalize the promotion, advocacy, funding and acts of homosexuality. It stiffens prison terms up to ten years in prison for LGBTQ+ advocates and three years for anyone identifying as such. Moreover, the bill seeks to withdraw health services from this community, including HIV medication.

The bill’s main sponsor, legislator Sam Nartey George, said, “Homosexuality is not a human right in Ghana, but a lifestyle choice. A sexual preference.” With this reasoning, legislators viewed preferences as not absolute, meaning they did not hesitate to pass a bill against it. Furthermore, George warned the US not to interfere with plans to pass the bill into law, threatening to halt Ghana’s business interests in the country. He said this in reference to the travel restrictions imposed upon Uganda following the signing of their own anti-LGBTQ+ law.

Speaker of Parliament Alban Bagbin, stated LGBTQ+ practices are strongly abhorred and will not be allowed to take root in the country. He said: I am very clear in my mind that the Parliament of Ghana will pass this Bill (to criminalize LGBTQ). I have gone through it and I will confirm that the Bill will be a reference point for many countries. It has gone through all the provisions of the constitution, laws and international obligations.

Rightlfy Ghana, a human rights organization in Ghana, believes that the passing of this bill erodes progress towards fighting HIV and AIDS. Additionally, they quoted a 2021 statement from the UN anti-AIDS program, UNAIDS, that viewed this bill as undermining the basic rights of the LGBTQ+ community. The statement warned of the potential for international law violations if the bill passed, and stated, “Given that LGBTI people are present in every family and every community it is not very difficult to imagine how, if it were to be adopted, this legislation could create a recipe for conflict and violence.”

The amendments were backed by a cross-party group of MPs, but will be scrutinised again before becoming law. The practice of gayism and lesbianism is already illegal in Ghana. The proposed legislation has faced condemnation at home and abroad. Critics say it infringes on rights guaranteed in Ghana’s constitution. Supporters say it will help preserve Ghanaian values. Multiple lawsuits have also been filed to challenge the bill in the country’s courts.

Majority of Ghanaians, especially the Christians, Muslims, the Traditional rulers, and various other religious groups support the bill. But is the law really important? Is it really necessary to enact it in order to stop LGTBQ+ practice in the country, or address the decaying sexual immorality issue? Is it among the more important bills in the country’s 1992 constitution which require amendments, such as the appointment of district chief executives by the president which President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had sought consensus to amend, or the much talked-about ex gratia law? Or is it just populists’ agenda, a political stance by certain Parliamentarians and other political aspirants to appeal to a majority of the electorate? Or is it because some African nations have enacted similar law?

Will the President of Ghana sign such a bill into law if it happens to come to his table? No reasonable President of the Republic of Ghana, whose politics is not to score cheap points, will sign such a bill into law. The reasons why such a law makes no sense are many and clearly obvious.

LGBTQ+ is an abbreviation for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning. In broader term, LGBTQIA+ is used to include intersex, asexual, and more. These terms are used to describe a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) was adapted to replace LGB (lesbian, gay, and bisexual) to make the community broader in the mid-to-late 1980s. LGTBQ+ may refer to anyone who is non-heterosexual or non-cisgender, instead of exclusively to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. The letter Q refers to those in the community who are identified as queer or are questioning their sexual or gender identity.

The concept is not internationally accepted as many think. In Europe, especially in Germany where it is much acclaimed, LGTBQ+ indulgers have not influenced the society, or changed the sexual orientation of the public. The practitioners are very few, and they are not publicly accepted as many thought. They are isolated by the public, especially in the northern parts of the country where the people are Reformation Christians, or Lutherans, and among the southern Catholics. The legalization of LGTBQ+ in Europe was not to let the public accept the concept, but to enable the people to be tolerant and accept the practitioners, or allow them to choose their lifestyle, and can even marry themselves.

But no African nation will legalize LGTBQ+ marriage. The LGTBTQ+ bill was introduced in Ghana Parliament somewhere in November 2021. Until the time when the debate on the bill began, these kinds of sexual practices were not even mentioned in any community in Ghana, or given those names, they are taboos across all the cultures in Ghanaian, and not entertained. The debate and the bill have made it even popular. The President of Ghana has said that he would not permit legalization of LGTBQ+ marriage.

Ghana is a very religious country, the people of Ghana are highly religious. According to the 2021 government census, approximately 71 percent of the population are Christian, 20 percent are Muslim,, and 6 percent belong to other religious groups or have no religious beliefs, but hold on to the traditional values of the society. 3 percent adhere to either indigenous or animistic religious beliefs. However, the religious beliefs of the people deeply unite the population. And so it would be very difficult for any foreign sexual practice to gain root among the people. Recently, a new group was formed around a shared disbelief in religion, the Humanist Association of Ghana, which practices a philosophy that is mostly unheard-of in Ghana. But the members of this group form imaginable percent of the population.

Are the Christians, Muslims, and Traditional believers who form 97 percent of the population saying that the less than one percent animistic believers would influence them and their children, and so the need for the law? Why should these highly religious group, who form the majority of the population fear the imaginable number of animists among them? Why are they unable to convert them, but rather fear that these small group will be the ones to convert them and their children? The problem actually is not the animistic thinkers and their effects on the society, it is rather the religious groups and how they are affecting the country and the people. They have failed the society. The Christianity in Ghana, and in Africa, has turned into money-making venture, the church leaders don’t care about souls anymore, all they care about are the tithes and the offerings of the people.

If the fear is that the small LGBTQ+ community in the country has a great potential to convert many Ghanaians to follow them, and therefore the need for a law to punish anyone preaching the sexual promiscuity, then what are the pastors, Imams, the fetish priests, and the traditional rulers teaching their followers and community members?

While discrimination against LGBTQ+ people is common in Ghana, it has not cross the mind of anybody to prosecute anyone under the colonial-era law. President Nana Akufo-Addo has publicly said that gay marriage will never be allowed while he is in power. Of course, no Ghanaian will even think about allowing gays and lesbians to marry in any community of the country. The bill therefore is very useless. If the text is passed by parliament, the president can either decide to ignore critics and sign it, or veto it -- something which analysts and diplomats say he may be unwilling to do, given widespread support for anti-LGBT legislation. But as intelligent as President Nana Addo Danquah is, he will not sign such a discriminatory and useless bill into law. He has said that gay marriage would not be allowed during his tenure.

According to the bill, “if an LGBTQ person is abused by other Ghanaians, and this LGBTQ person goes to the hospital, and then the doctor even treats this person, the bill is criminalising the doctor. Because this person is an LGBTQ person and you are a doctor and then you have treated the person. So you are in a way also encouraging the LGBTQ community." Alex Kofi Donkor, LGBTQ+ Rights Ghana director and founder says.

"Ghana is a very tolerant country. Ghana is not a one family value system. We even believe in the extended family system, we believe in the uncles, aunties, and everybody coming together to build up an individual in the society. So how come somebody is proposing a bill about family values and all of a sudden, people do not want to raise an eye about it. What is it about the Ghanaian family value that is so threatened that there needs to be a bill that will curb?" Alex Kofi Donkor touted.

Activists worry Ghana will follow the same path as Nigeria and Uganda, where similar bills were passed in recent years. More than half the countries in sub-Saharan African have anti-homosexuality laws, with some punishing it with death penalty under sharia law, although there have been no known modern-day executions, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Nearly 90 percent of Ghanaians said they would approve of a decision by the government to criminalise same-sex relationships, according to research group Afrobarometer using 2014 data. It against the background of its popularity that sees the likes like Sam George to raise strong arguments for it. It is only populist propaganda. The Lawmakers pushing for the bill argue that homosexuality is foreign to Ghanaian culture. If it is foreign to Ghanaian culture, why should it bother them? In Ghana, and all African communities, polygamy is legal and not a crime. African men can marry as many wives as they want. It is Christianity, which came from Europe and United States which criminalized polygamy and made it unacceptable in the African continent.

Europeans and Americans do not practice polygamy. Polygamous marriage is illegal in Europe or United States, and a crime in these two places. But these are people who have legalized gay and lesbianism. It is not a crime to practice gay or lesbianism in Europe or United States. Europeans are atheists. Countries in Europe with the most people reporting no belief in any sort of spirit, god, or higher power are France (40%), Czech Republic (37%), Sweden (34%), Netherlands (30%), Estonia (29%), Germany (27%), Belgium (27%) and Slovenia (26%). But Ghana is not atheist, the country is highly religious with most people believing in spirit, God, deities, river gods, or higher powers.

In Ghana, the traditional rulers can invoke the gods against any member of the community who misbehaves in an improper manner which is against the ancestral norms. Men who sleep with other men’s wives are often punished by the gods. In most communities in Ghana, it is believed that improper sexual orientations are offenses against the gods, and they are punishable by the spirits. Moreover, the Christians, and the Muslims, or the Traditional rulers, and the courts are not ready any day till thy kingdom come to officiate any gay or lesbian marriage. Why then is the need for a law? Where is the fear?

Or is it simply Ghana wants to imitate the other African countries, such as Nigeria, and recently Uganda, who promulgated such law in their countries. Ghana is more advanced, and the beacon of civilization to go in this same direction as other African countries. Probably, Ghana and the other African countries also want to criminalize gay and lesbianism as a retaliatory response to the Europeans and the Americans for criminalising polygamy in their countries.

But with all jokes aside, the bill pose more harm and damages to the country than good. It is robing the hard-earned reputation of the country as the most intellectual nation in Africa. Again, the debate and the passage of the bill in Ghana parliament is coming at an inconvenient time for the President who wants to attract African-Americans and the Ghanaian diaspora through his programme "The Year of Return".

With a reputation for stability and respect for the rule of law, Ghana has also attracted businesses like Twitter who opened its first Africa office in the country. Ghana tops West Africa as the most likely destination of Europeans and Americans, and currently the West African nation with the highest number of foreigners and expatriates.

The effects of the bill, if signed into law, will not afflict unnecessary pains on a small number of people who take pleasure in their own bodies, it will also negate the impact which the migrants and expatriates have on the economy of the country, especially it will stifles the flow of foreign investments from the West, who are the greatest partner of the country’s development. The country is more towards the West than towards the East. And besides, the law is meaningless. However, few citizens, especially from the main opposition party, who had their education from the East, see the law as a means to alienate the country from the bond with the West.

The Christian should have known better. Law is not a solution, it rather makes bad situation worse

A law against a bad situation or a bad condition does not correct it, it rather makes the situation worse. The Christians should be the ones to preach against the law, if they really understand the Christian Bible, and are teaching the principles of Christ. In the Christian Bible, it is written that the law which was given to Moses made the sinful condition of humanity worse. It is written in the Christian Bible that the first man brought sin and death to the world. But before the law from Mount Sinai came, sin was already in the world, but sin was not imputed when there was no law from Mount Sinai. So the law from Mount Sinai worsened the bad situation of man. However, God is using the power of His grace through His Son Jesus Christ to save the world. (Romans 5:12-13, 20-21)

And that sin would not have dominion over the people if they are undef the grace, and not undef the law. (Romans 6:14)

The man who taught these things in the Christian Bible was a former Pharisee, one of the strictest religion of the Jews, which promoted and propagated the law of Moses, and punished, even killed those who disobeyed and offended the law, until he was converted by Jesus Christ Himself. He said that the ministry which brought death was “engraved in letters on stone. But their minds were made dull, for to this day the same veil remains when the old covenant is read. It has not been removed, because only in Christ is it taken away. Even to this day when Moses is read, a veil covers their hearts.” (2 Corinthians 3:7, 14-15 NIV)

Before the law from Mount Sinai was given, the people in the world lived to 900 years, even Adam who sinned and brought death to the world, lived for 930 years. By the time of Moses, people were dying at the age of 70, that is, from a life expectancy of 900 years. Moses cried to God to help, saying to Him, ”… you sweep people away in the sleep of death— they are like the new grass of the morning: In the morning it springs up new, but by evening it is dry and withered. We are consumed by your anger and terrified by your indignation. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence. All our days pass away under your wrath; we finish our years with a moan. Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.” (Psalms 90:5-10 NIV)

True Christians preach the grace of God by the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel of God’s grace is the power of God that saves sinners from their sins, and turn them into a new leave. Christians who have truly received Christ can testify to this, they have behind them rotten lifestyles which they do not even want to talk about again, since they turned into a life of decency after repentance. These Christians were not punished, or imprisoned in their sinful days. But they are the ones calling for punishment of “sinners. They should be ashamed of themselves.

The President of the Republic of Ghana is nit expected to sign such a meaningless and a disgraceful bill into law, no matter what the public say. The President is a true Christian, who was brought by Christian patents, and understands true Christian values. He is not a hypocrite type, or a populist type.