Former Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo has expressed her perspective on the controversial LGBTQ+ community, which is advocating for recognition and legalization of their activities that are considered ‘forbidden’ in Ghana.
The Parliament of Ghana has recently passed a stringent anti-gay bill, known as the 2021 Promotion of Appropriate Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, with unanimous support from all 275 members.
This bill aims to criminalize the promotion, advocacy, funding, and engagement of homosexual acts. It also imposes severe prison sentences of up to ten years for LGBTQ+ advocates and three years for individuals identifying as such. Additionally, the bill seeks to deny health services, including HIV medication, to the LGBTQ+ community.
Despite the bill not yet being enacted into law, the LGBTQ+ community in Ghana continues to fight for their rights, receiving support from the Western world and witnessing an increase in their numbers and the expansion of their activities that are considered ‘illicit’.
During an interview with Bola Ray on Starr Chat, the former Chief Justice expressed her inability to comprehend why someone would attempt to impose a different culture on Ghana.
“Everybody has the right to express themselves but nobody has the right to insist and claim a lifestyle that is not life-sustaining. If all men are going to sleep with men and all women and going to sleep with women we are gone in a generation or two. Is that not so?
She indicated that the Bible admonishes us that be fruitful, multiply and replenish the earth.
“If you are not going to position yourself for godly replenishment of the earth well, that is all I got to say. But if you want to call yourself it, if you want to call yourself they, if you want to call yourself whatever, that’s one thing. But don’t try to push other people into cultures that also are not.
“Why should someone think that their culture is better than yours so they have to insist and threaten that if you cannot be like me you will see what I will do to you. Really, where are the rights in that?
Madam Akuffo further questioned why anyone would want to change the concept of marriage to a different form.
“Marriage in those terms is man between a man and a woman. So if a man and man want to live forever they shouldn’t call it a marriage they should call it something else. Marriage is between man and woman and if we ever try to change the definition of marriage from the civil law definition of marriage I will be among the protestors.”
