Catholic Bishop’s Conference throws weight behind passage of LGBTQ+ bill

The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) has thrown its weight behind the passage of the LGBTQ+++ Bill, saying it must be passed into law to protect authentic Ghanaian family values which are under threat from ho­mosexual acts.

It has therefore commended the country’s Parliament for the effort and time spent on developing the bill, which when passed into law, would promote proper human sexual rights and impose punitive measures that are commensurate with the act of homosexuality.

This was contained in a statement signed and issued in Accra yesterday by Most Rev. Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, President of GCBC and Catholic Bishop of Sunyani.

“We can state that the draft bill on “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values 2021” currently in Parliament is in the right direction, as it seeks to enact laws against criminal homosexual acts.

The bill aims to provide for proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian family values, proscribe LGBTQ+ and related activities, and provide for the protection of children, persons who are victims or accused of LGBTTQQIAAP+ and related activities, and other persons,” the statement added.

While the Church speaks of homosexual acts as sins, the State, it said, does not use such language, the Church recognises that the State must carry out measures it considers dangerous to society.

“For the State, whose duty it is to enact laws to govern the citizenry, the language used is that of crime. A Crime may be defined as an action or omission, which constitutes an offence and is usually deemed socially harmful or dangerous and is punishable by law.

In the light of this definition, homosexual acts from the point of view of the State may be criminal in nature,” the statement explained.

It said if the state views homo­sexual acts as not in the interest of the nation and, indeed, harm the nation, it was necessary to in­troduce punitive measures to deal with such situations.

“The lawmakers may decide that a man marrying a man or a woman marrying a woman is not in the interest of the nation since, in the long term, it will affect the size of the population of our country if many people do this.

In such a case, the lawmakers will be within their rights to enact laws against that. In such cases, it will be right for the lawmakers to criminalise such homosexual actions by punitive measures,” the statement added.

The GCBC argued that while it was not right to criminalise homo­sexuals just for being homosexu­als, the State was within its right to criminalise the acts of homosexu­als in the interest of the nation.

It said while the church does not condemn homosexuals for being homosexuals, it condemns the ho­mosexual acts that they perform.

“The long-held teaching of the Roman Catholic Church has been that while homosexual people are to be loved and respected and not be discriminated against, homo­sexual acts are intrinsically immor­al and must be condemned.