LABADI, Ghana – I have gotten into trouble in the past for sticking up for homosexuals (see “Say it Loud I’m Gay and Proud” in my archives)I am not gay, never been, and never will be. I believed, and still do, that what two consenting adults decide to do in the privacy of their bedrooms is nobody else’s business.
Homosexuality is not new to Ghana. What may be new, and what people are concerned about, I believe, is the new boldness, acquired from examples from elsewhere, to practice their sexuality openly. And yet, does anyone have the moral authority to serve a sentence of enforced secrecy on anyone else? Homosexuality as a culture, a way of life, has not been addressed in the laws of our land. What our laws address is the issue of unnatural canal knowledge, defined as penetrative sex with the penis in the anus.
It does not even address the issue of lesbianism and the multitude of other practices that modern homosexual relationships might entail. This means that, at the moment in Ghana, one can go out with a male colleague, hold their hand, even kiss them, and that would be perfectly legal. Who is going to set up cameras in people’s home to find out if they have penetrative sex or not? Would that not be a breach of human rights?
And who has the time anyway? Is that our biggest worry in Ghana? How two adults decide to have sex? People are happy to hop on the bandwagon and condemn western culture for a practice that is “alien” to us. What the same people would not care admit, is that in the West,one would go to prison if one had sex with a minor (less than 16 years) Does that happen in Ghana? Who has been impregnating all the little girls in Ghana who get pregnant. What has the church got to say about that?
In the West, you could go to prison for raping your wife? Has that happened in Ghana yet? What has the church got to say about rape? About all the teachers in schools who rape their little innocent students? What has the church got to say about the general moral decadence which means that, female students have sometimes got to have sex with lecturers to pass exams as openly admitted by the new education minister.
What has the church got to say about that? What has the church got to say about the fact that our young students depend on “apo” to pass their examinations rather than burning the midnight oil? Sometimes results can even be changed once they have been released if one is prepared to pay the right amount of money. What is the church saying about that? We are a christian country where people so believe in the bible, they are prepared to hate, molest, even kill their fellow man for engaging in practices contrary to it’s teachings.
How does one reconcile that with the fact that we happen to be one of the most corrupt countries on earth. What is the church saying about that? Does the bible not preach love for your fellow man and did Jesus not go out of his way to be friendly to people seen to be outcasts in that era? The hypocrisy of it all is quite annoying.
If we addressed all our social,economic and sexual misdeamenours with half as much vigour and enthusiasm as we are prepared to exert, casting stones at others when we live in glass houses, Ghana would be a better place. After all, as I heard Mr Ndebugri say the other day, if we had listened to the church, there would be no genetics today – they opposed Gregor Mendel from the bottom of the deck.
