Ghanaians fight 'satanic' sexuality education programme

The introduction of Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) for primary school children, starting from age four, has sparked off agitations by well-placed Ghanaians, including church leaders and teachers.

Beginning next year, pupils in all public schools, including five-year-olds, will be taught CSE in Ghana.

The United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) launched the CSE programme this year in a bid to empower adolescents and young people to deepen their scope of existing activities to attain Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE).

Known as the “Our right, Our lives, Our Future (O³), the CSE is supported by the governments of Sweden and Ireland. It is being implemented in Ghana, Eswatini (formerly Swaziland), Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe for effective delivery of quality comprehensive sexuality programmes.

The Ghana Education Service (GES) has argued that the subject content would be age-appropriate to enable, say, pre-schoolers to be empowered with values that would protect them from sexual harassment.

Critics say the age of five is too early for children to learn about sex, and described the programme as demonic and a ploy to prepare the minds of the children to be open to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (LGBTI) activism, and also indoctrinate them into the practice.

Parents and religious leaders are very uncomfortable with the proposed programme and have kicked against it, claiming it is the responsibility of parents to teach their kids about sex and sexual issues, and insist they will not leave that in the hands of politicians.

Some have also questioned the need to teach kids such stuff, when they are still far from being sexually active.

But officials of the Ghana Education Service say the CSE introduced into the curriculum will empower children to know about their sexuality and reproductive health issues, and has nothing to do with LGBTI.

According to Director-General of the Ghana Education Service, Prof Kwasi Opoku-Amankwa, the CSE will help “nurture positive attitudes, open-mindedness, respect for self and others, non-judgmental attitudes, and a sense of responsibility concerning sexual and reproductive health issues.”

A lot more people, including Mr. Kofi Bentil of IMANI Ghana, have vehemently opposed the programme.

A Law Lecturer and fierce critic of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) movement, Moses Foh-Amoaning, has slammed the introduction of the Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) in Ghanaian public schools.

Mr. Foh-Amoaning, who is also the Executive Secretary and Spokesperson for the National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values, says teaching five year olds about sexuality is clearly an LGBTI agenda, and that some texts and modules in the curriculum that will guide the CSE programme in Ghana resonate with LGBT activism.

He believes there is an active strategy by the LGBT movement to get acceptance – especially in Africa, where resistance has been most strong.

Mr. Foh-Amoaning pointed to sections of the CSE curriculum that he believes support the pro-LGBT agenda, noting that at age six, children are meant to learn about “Being Male or Female” under “Knowing Myself”.

Rev. Prof. Paul Frimpong-Manso, President of the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council, comprising over 200 churches, has described the GES boss as a “disaster” for allowing himself to be outwitted by the strategy of the (LGBT) community to rob the children off their morals.

The President of the Pentecostal and Charismatic Council is convinced the CSE is an LGBT strategy to capture the minds of children to accept what they believe in.

He is convinced that nothing good will come out of the programme.

Prof. Frimpong-Manso said he had implicit faith in President Nana Akufo-Addo, and “I know he will not sanction such a satanic agenda,” he told a local radio station in an interview.

The President of the National Association of Graduate Teachers (NAGRAT), Mr. Angel Carbonu, emphasised that graduate teachers are not likely to accept the contents of the CSE curricula.