The last few weeks have witnessed intensive homophobic rhetoric in the Ghanaian media in response to news that the Ghanaian LGBT+ community opened a new office and held a fundraising and rights advocacy in January 2021. The ‘dress rehearsal’ for the current situation took place in 2019, when the National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values (comprising the Christian council, traditional leaders, the Catholic Bishops Conference, Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, Atta Mills Institute, Coalition of Muslim Organisations and others) rose against proposals to include comprehensive sexuality education in the Ghanaian school curriculum arguing that it was an attempt to promote LGBT+ rights in Ghana. The government buckled under the pressure and the proposals were dropped, but the scale of misconceptions peddled at the time and in the ongoing saga demonstrates the sore need for sexuality education and advocacy in Ghana.
Aspects of the commentary are based on the old chestnut that anything other than heterosexual relations and male / female identity is ‘unnatural’, seemingly completely oblivious to the abundant evidence of ‘natural’ same sex relations and intersex births from the dawn of history till present. Others swear to high heaven that LGBT+ are against Christianity, Islam and other religions even as they themselves fornicate, lie, cheat, steal and commit every sinful act forbidden by their religion. They cite passages such as Leviticus 18:22, but fail to give credible responses when asked whether we should also stone non-virgin brides to death (Deuteronomy 22:13–30) or challenge women’s leadership in society as commanded by 1 Timothy 2:12. There is also the no small matter that in a plural society one’s religious belief is a strictly personal matter. It cannot serve as basis for how others should live. Isn’t this what supposedly sets us apart from fanatics such as Boko Haram, who believe that others should adhere to their religious standards or face death?
The fact that January’s LGBT+ event was attended by the Australian, EU and Danish Ambassadors is also presented as a sure sign that rich, powerful Western nations are trying to impose LGBT+ ideology on Ghana. Yet it is prohibitions against same sex relations that are the Western imports. It was British colonisers who introduced ‘anti-sodomy’ laws in the then Gold Coast. So, commentary casting same sex relations as ‘alien’ or ‘foreign’ imports sadly reflect an ignorance of both colonial history and traditionally relatively tolerant attitudes towards differences in sexual and bodily forms such as kwadwo besia and obaa barima (roughly translating as a male with stereotypical female features and behaviours and the reverse, respectively).
