We can equally give birth – LGBTQ+ community claps back at critics

Ghanaian transgender, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi, who is also a board member of the LGBTQ+ Right Ghana, has said that it is lame to argue that LGBTQ+ activities will end procreation.

According to her, some heterosexual men are impotent and yet society does not chastise them for their inability to procreate.

She argued that members of the LGBTQ+ community can procreate just like heterosexual persons.

She made this known during an interview with Samuel Eshun on e.TV Ghana’s ‘Fact Sheet’ show.

“If you criminalize LGBT on the basis of procreation, then I believe very soon, women who cannot give birth will also be labeled as criminals. Families are at war because women are not giving birth and yet no one chastises the heterosexual man for not procreating. The woman is not a procreation machine".

"LGBTQ+ persons can equally give birth biologically because a transwoman can give birth, a transman can give birth, a gay person can decide to give birth, a lesbian can decide to give birth. Let’s not confuse sexuality and gender.”

The Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2021 was introduced into parliament earlier this year.

This bill is seeking to expand on the current law that provides up to three years in prison for same-sex activity.

The new bill when passed will prohibit and criminalize advocacy, funding and act of LGBTQ+ while promoting conversion therapy programs seeking to “convert” people from homosexuality to heterosexuality.

Meanwhile, a group of academics and lawyers have filled a memorandum challenging the anti-gay legislation submitted to Parliament.

In the memorandum, they contend that the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021, which seeks to criminalize LGBTQ+ and adjacent activities, is an “impermissible invasion of the inviolability of human dignity.”

Some Christian leaders, on the other hand, have submitted a memorandum to Parliament on the Proper Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, endorsing the bill.