Make it criminal to identify as LGBT+ – Group to Akufo-Addo

A group identifying itself as Journalists Against LGBT+ has said it wants a law enacted to criminalise holding oneself as an LGBT+ person in public.

The group's convenor, Mr Isaac Boamah Darko, told Class91.3FM’s morning show host Kofi Oppong Asamoah on Monday, 1 March 2021 that: “Those who hold themselves as gays, lesbians, homosexuals, we want the President to enact a law to prevent them so they may not even have the audacity to hold themselves as gay, as they are doing currently”.

“It is true that the law does not prevent anyone from holding him or herself as a gay but prevents anyone engaging in the act”, Mr Boamah Darko said, adding: “It makes the law so soft in the sense that we cannot in any way prevent anyone who comes out boldly to hold himself as a lesbian or gay”.

“That is why we are calling on the President, to, as a matter of urgency, enact a law to deter these people from holding themselves as gays and lesbians”, he explained.

Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo recently stated that the legalisation of same-sex marriage will never happen in his time as President.

According to the President, “I have said this before, and let me, in conclusion, stress again that it will not be under the presidency of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo that same-sex marriage will be legalised in Ghana. It will never happen in my time as President.”

President Akufo-Addo made this known on Saturday, 27 February 2021, when he attended the Installation and Enthronement ceremony of Rt Rev Dr Cyril Kobina Ben-Smith, as the 2nd Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Ghana, at Asante-Mampong, in the Ashanti Region.

This is not the first time the President has publicly made comments about the issue of same-sex marriage in Ghana.

It will be recalled that on August 9, 2018, at the 2018 Synod of the Global Evangelical Church, he stated: “Let me assure that this Government has no plans to change the law on same-sex marriage. We have no authority, and we will not seek any authority to do so”.