Churches, Teachers Rejects 'Satanic' Sexuality Education

The resistance against the planned introduction of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) into the basic school curriculum is deepening as churches and graduate teachers join in.

The Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC), an organisation made up of over 200 church denominations in Ghana, has described the plan to begin teaching CSE in all public schools to children from five years upwards as satanic.

The National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT) has also said it was not consulted.

NAGRAT President, Angel Carbonu, said on the Super Morning Show on Joy FM, Monday that graduate teachers are not likely to accept the contents of the CSE curricula.

Related: Full document: How Ghanaian kids will be taught Sexuality

Controversial CSE

The Ghana government and United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) launched the CSE programme this year in a bid to empower adolescents and young people to attain a Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE).

Known as the “Our right, Our lives, Our Future (O³), CSE is supported by governments of Sweden and Ireland.

It is being implemented in Ghana, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe for what proponents say is will be an effective delivery of quality comprehensive sexuality programmes.

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has argued that the subject content of the CSE would be age-appropriate to enable say pre-schoolers to be empowered with values that would protect them from sexual harassment.

However, most critics have said the age of five is too early for children to learn about sex. Others say some of the topics, such as “Being Male or Female” under a broader topic of “Knowing Myself” resonates with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) activism.

“I won't call it Comprehensive Sexuality Education it is Comprehensive Satanic Engagement,” GPCC President, Rev Prof Paul Yaw Frimpong-Manso also told Daniel Dadzie on the Super Morning Show .

Photo: Rev Prof Paul Yaw Frimpong-Manso

The Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council President admits he has not perused the guidelines of the CSE programme for Ghana exhaustively, but said he is convinced that nothing good will come out of the programme.

Related: Video: Documentary against teaching children sexuality in the U.S.

Rev Prof Paul Yaw Frimpong-Manso said the CSE programme is a surreptitious attempt by some secular Western countries to discourage the worship of God and destroy Ghana’s traditional moral values.

Weak law, strong feelings

Ghana has a loose law on homosexuality.

Legal experts say the country’s laws do not criminalise all the wide range of acts that could be termed “homosexual.”

For instance, the law only criminalises “unnatural carnal knowledge” – explained as when there has been the least degree of penetration.

Hence a sexual act between two females does not qualify as unnatural carnal knowledge and hence cannot be punished.

But many Ghanaians see any form of same-sex activity as illegal.

Physical and violent attacks against LGBT have been reported several times in Accra and other regional capitals.

Also, many Ghanaians are very religious and committed to upholding their traditional moral values all of which are anti-LGBT.

—Myjoyonline