Ghana: Church Enters the Debate on Homosexuality

The gala, held in Accra on January 31, 2021, ignited the powder. That day, “LGBT + Ghana,” an association campaigning for the decriminalization of homosexuality, inaugurated a community space in the Ghanaian capital, in the presence of foreign diplomats, including the Ambassador of the European Union (EU).

It did not take more to trigger the ire of the political class: on February 11, the National Coalition for Appropriate Sexual Rights and Family Values ​​(NCPHSRFV), through the voice of its secretary, lawyer Moses Foh-Amoaning, lambasted the interference of Europeans: “the European Union should not impose its values ​​and beliefs on Ghanaians who are against homosexuality,” declared the lawyer.

A few days later, it was the Church’s turn to take a firm stand: in a statement released on February 19, Msgr. Philip Nameeh, Bishop of Tamale and president of the Ghana Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) wrote on behalf of the episcopate to “condemn all those who support the practice of homosexuality in Ghana”; adding, “to support the position of lawyer Foh-Amoaning and the Coalition which has led the crusade against homosexuality for several years.”

Meanwhile, the NCPHSRFV wrote to the head of state, Akufo-Addo, asking him to speak out “on the issue of homosexuality and its practice in Ghana.”

The law in force, which dates from 1960, stipulates that “any person engaging in unnatural carnal relations incurs a prison sentence which may not be less than 5 years and greater than 25 years.”

This is a legal provision that militant associations, heavily funded from abroad, are trying to do away with.

If the Ghanaian prelates take care to specify that they register “against any violence or unjust discrimination perpetrated against a homosexual person,” they recall that in the Bible, “homosexuality is considered a perversion and a pagan abomination,” in their terms.

“We also call on the government of Ghana to close the LGBTQI offices that were recently opened in Accra,” concludes the statement from the Bishops’ Conference, which “urges the executive and parliament never to be intimidated, nor to succumb to the push to legalize LGBTQI rights in Ghana.”