Fighting LGBTQI with Ghanaian: family values notion wrong!

Following the brouhaha over the closure of the LGBTQ office in Accra, matters are yet to settle. The Member of Parliament (MP) for Ningo Prampram, Mr Sam George, is leading the passage of The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021.

Though in the initial stages, there has been much debate on it.

Even the clergy have vehemently sided with the passage of such a bill threatening not to vote for any politician that does not support the passage of the bill.

Some professionals, led by Lawyer Akoto Ampaw, have on the other hand, submitted a memo to Parliament, insisting that the bill when passed could infringe on the freedoms of all.

The argument for the anti-LGBTQI bill has been on moral grounds rather than legal, with the insistence that Ghana has got family values that need to be protected.

Falls short

The bill, however, falls short of what it intends to achieve. The title of the bill itself is defeatist.

The limiting of Ghanaian family values to just fighting LGBTQI is incongruous. What is even fascinating are aspects on the proper on human sexual rights.

Who can guarantee proper human sexual rights? Who is going to ensure that people in their closests adhere to proper sexual rights?

Ensuring that our society is free from immoral activities is good, but immorality can never be the subject of only an aspect of behaviour.

It is important to draw the attention of the legislators and the church, in particular, that there are myriad immoral behaviours going against proper Ghanaian family.

The prostitutes, online sex traders, adulterers, fornicators, drug traffickers, charm chasers and hosts of other fascinating immoral behaviours impinge on the values of the family in the country.

One cannot promote Ghanaian family values and overlook these too. Singling out the fight against people who associate with LGBTQI means that the bill has targeted a certain group of individuals they deem unfit in society.

Laws

We need a society free of immoral behaviour, but we cannot altogether do away with immorality. Using laws to control immorality is like wanting to clean the beach of plastic wastes.

We must be careful, as a country, the manner in which we direct our laws that seems to target a certain minority group and subject them to criminality for no crime whatsoever, but rather because of an immoral behaviour.

Have we thought of criminalising fornication, adultery, oral sex, anal sex, etc., because they are not part of Ghanaian culture or family values?

To the clergymen, who are on fire to support the anti-LGBTQI bill, they must understand that the law of Christ is not a law of incrimination but the law of invitation for self-worth for those He (Christ) deems to have gone astray.

The writer is an M.Phil student, University of Education, Winneba.