The Executive Director of the Center for Democratic Development (CDD), Professor Henry Kwasi Prempeh, says the controversial Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Value Bill, commonly referred to as the anti-LGBTQ+ Bill is an attempt to criminalize an identity that we don’t understand.
He insists that what is missing in the bill is the lack of appreciation with some humility of the fact that “we do not know certain things about nature and about life, we do not know why certain people are homosexual and others on the majority may not be.”
“Instead of looking at this bill and accepting with some level of honesty that we don’t know; we are rather criminalizing an identity that we don’t understand” Professor Prempeh argued.
The CDD Executive Director Ghanaian indicated that the gay community have not asked for anything, adding that “what this bills seeking to do is to essentially homogenize a certain sexual orientation that we the majority possess.”
Professor Prempeh argued that the fact that a small minority in our population may not possess the same sexual orientation has become for us something we cannot live with and therefore the majority is trying to homogenize it.
Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile programme on Saturday, Professor Prempeh urged the President to refrain from signing the bill into law.
He added: “One of the things that has happened in this conversation is the misfactorisation of what this bill is and what it’s not.”
According to him, the “bill is not about adults having sex with children, rape or defilement; that is already criminal, it’s not about same sex marriage that is already not allowed under our laws. Nobody is making a claim under same marriage and it’s important to also not that this law is not emanating from anybody in the Ghanaian gay community.”
Professor Prempeh further argued that the bill contravenes the provisions of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and should not be tolerated.
He emphasized that the proposed legislation threatens to violate the fundamental human rights of individuals belonging to minority groups.
“When you take the bill as a whole, we believe it offends the constitution because it violates one of the constitutional provisions designed to safeguard some separation of powers between what kind of bill the executive may propose and what can of bill parliament through a private member’s bill may propose.”
“So, article 108 states that unless a bill is introduced by or on behalf of the President, Parliament shall not proceed on it if it has some fiscal effects,” he said.
The law professor believes the proponents of the bill are trying to criminalize an identity they don’t fully comprehend.
According to him, criminal laws should attack acts rather than identity, but in this case, this bill attacks the identity of a certain minority group.
