Nana Oye’s stance on homosexuality has got many Ghanaians coming out of the woodwork. Many are calling for her head because she said gay people should be accorded the same rights as any other citizen of Ghana. NUGS has cautioned the Appointments Committee of Parliament to reject Nana Oye’s nomination for the position of Minister of State in charge of Gender, Children and Social Protection “in order to protect our highly esteemed Ghanaian cultural values and customary laws” or Ghanaian students will be hitting the streets. If NUGS went on demonstrations against the thievery of public funds by politicians and married men chasing “small small” girls on their university campuses, Ghana will be a much better place.
Like NUGS, all the anti-homosexual crusaders are out and their arguments are as pathetic as their bigoted attitudes. Their irrational argument is two fold- the moral side and the religious side.
The moral argument says homosexuality is alien to our Ghanaian cultural values. They will happily point out homosexuality to be something that has come from the “white people”. This argument assumes homosexuality to be the exclusive cultural preference of some other cultures or nations. Gay people can be found in every society. I do not pretend to fully understand why people turn out to be gay. They do not choose their sexual orientation, it is rather inborn it seems. It is biological. There are over 1,500 species that have been found to display homosexual behaviour. Are we going to conclude these species consciously chose to be homosexual?
Then we have the religious side of the anti-homosexual bandwagon. They say homosexuality is an abomination to the Lord. But it is funny how they cherry pick and miss out the scriptures that list a load of other abominations like: Lending with interest to your brother- are we going to close down all banks and jail all bankers? Wearing clothes of the opposite sex, re-marriage of former companions, taking ornaments from idols- are Ghanaian women going to pull off their Indian hair, most of which are collected from religious shrines where they were given as sacrifices? Cheating, lying tongue. So there we are! Let those self-righteous, bigoted individuals cast that proverbial stone.
The religious argument also reasons that God did not create the anus for sexual pleasure. And for this reason, homosexuality should be made illegal under our laws. Well, neither was the mouth created for sexual pleasure so why not make all forms oral sex illegal?
And then there is the religious argument for procreation- that the creator commanded humans to breed and fill the earth. They assume legalising homosexuality will somehow cause all humans to be gay and therefore cause extinction of the human race- a very irrational argument to say the least. Condoms and other birth control drugs are sold in every chemist in Ghana yet we somehow think it is homosexuality that will cause human extinction?!
This article is not to say homosexuality is right or wrong. It is to expose the illogical arguments against it. There may be some good arguments for the anti-homosexual cause, but I am yet to hear it. I do not see how a consensual relationship between two adults of the same sex should imperil the wider society. This is clearly a discussion that we need to have as a nation, but you cannot have a productive debate when one side threatens death and destruction upon the other. Equality does not mean that we are all the same. Each of us is different in our own special way. But we also have the common qualities that make us all humans. So each of us should be treated with respect and dignity.
