The issue of homosexuality has made it back into the news after UK Prime Minister, Theresa May offered to help African countries including Ghana to decriminalize it. Theresa May earlier this week blamed colonialism for turning Africans against homosexuality and ventured to help in correcting the mess they created by making Africans believe it was a sinful and evil act. Ghanaians have reacted with the same homophobia that comes to play whenever the issue is brought up, and are insisting that homosexuality will never ever be encouraged in our society.
Recently Professor Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights described the Speaker of Parliament as deluded for saying parliament will never pass any law to legalize same-sex marriage, stating that there are a significant number of gay people in the country and their rights and freedoms must as well be recognized. Ghana’s most opinionated albino Foh Amoaning responded by calling the UN envoy an idiot and insisted such a practice will never be legal, to the applause and admiration of most Ghanaians, who encouraged him to keep up with the homophobia.
The Information Minister Mustapha Hamid has also come out to inform Ghanaians that Ghana is still very much anti-gay and assured the people that no matter how much pressure foreign governments put on the country to legalize such an abomination, we will not succumb. According to him, we still have very basic struggles to overcome as a country and have not advanced to the point where homosexual marriage should be our cup of tea.
“If you tell me that a man must sleep with a man so as to show his human rights for Ghana, I can assure you that our Parliament is a real micro pause of the rule of Ghana. Ghanaians do not support gay rights and nobody is going to make any law that will support this kind of thing”, he said to journalists in response to Professor Alston’s statements on behalf on the UN.  “We are uniquely Ghanaian…The law is based on custom and tradition…So the custom of the land is what factions law. So people or the law cannot be divorced from the cultures and traditions of the people. So as far as our cultures and traditions are concerned, gayism and lesbianism are un-Ghanaian.’’
“It is difficult to see how foreign interests can impose foreign cultures on us…It is a non-issue. The issues of bread and butter which is what I have been responding to, are more critical. The issue of poverty and how we can eradicate it are the matters that concern developing nations today. If they’ve gone past the kind of poverty that we have and therefore can afford to talk about other issues, that is fine with them. But for us, we [Ghana] want to stick with the bread and butter issues.’’