By Papisdaff Abdullah [caption id="attachment_46830" align="alignleft" width="470"] Information Minister Mustapha Hamid[/caption]
The Government of Ghana has shot down incessant calls by Western leaders for the legalisation of homosexuality. The UK Prime Minister Theresa May Tuesday called on African leaders attending the Commonwealth Heads of government meeting in London to decriminalize homosexuality in their various countries.
It is wrong, according to her, for homosexuals to be persecuted for their sexual orientation, offering her country’s readiness to help African countries to reform their laws to accommodate the interest of homosexuals.
Her call comes on the back of a similar one by the Danish Ambassador to Ghana, Tove Degnbol who called on Ghanaians to respect the rights of gays and lesbians.
May’s call was followed by the United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Prof. Philip Alston who Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Aron Mike Oquaye as delusional over his stiff opposition to the legalization of homosexuality in Ghana.
The National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values, an anti-gay CSO in Ghana has also vowed to oppose any attempt to legalize LGBTI in the West African country. “ We are going to make this a political issue….we will campaign against all political parties in this country that will not openly defend the right of Africans to believe in what we believe in, because that is our custom and we have the right to do so”, they declared.
Commenting on the calls by the UK Prime Minister and the UN Special Rapporteur, the Information Minister Mustapha Hamid said as far as Ghanaian law, tradition and customs are concerned “gayism and lesbianism are un-Ghanaian.”
“And therefore, really, it is difficult to see how foreign interest can impose foreign cultures on us. So as far as, I am concerned…it is a non-issue,” he added.
