It sometimes happens. You sit down to write a story about something in the news and by the time you finish it, someone else has finished their version and beat you to the publication manager. That happened to me last night when I wrote a story about the ongoing collaboration between the church and state in Ghana to create a nation rooted in homophobia.
Chrislove beat me to the punch because I had decided to post today rather than last evening.
But I have been convinced by several people that the story is important enough to deserve more than one post. So here goes.
Sam P. Yalley is a so-called public interest lawyer and a former deputy minister in the administration of former military dictator Jerry John Rawlings. He is proposing that persons arrested for acts of homosexuality be charged with genocide. He also is trying to recruit his nation and its police to perform those arrests. His reasoning is that homosexuality exterminates the concept of procreation.
Yalley made his comments in response to the Attorney General, Martin Amidu, who said that homosexual acts between two consenting adults were not illegal with regard to Ghana's laws if they were confined to the privacy of the partner's bedroom.
For me there is another session of the criminal code which people are not taking a look at, it is about genocide.
Genocide results in the extermination of the human race and if you expand the meaning of homosexuality to mean that a man cannot have a child with another man then it means that that practice would lead to the extermination of mankind and therefore for me if i am to charge anybody apart from having unnatural carnal knowledge, i would also charge him with genocide and see how he can get out of that situation.
If you are a man and you are having canal knowledge with a man how are you going to have a child?
I agree totally with the clergy in condemning it.
--Sam P. Yalley
John Ndeburgi, Member of Parliament for Zebilla and fellow lawyer, said this concept of genocide is "rather farfetched and we may mislead the public if we are to stretch things that far."
Meanwhile the Presbyterian Church of Ghana has also recently announced that it will be stepping up its promotion of the scientifically discredited practice of reparative therapy because the spread of homosexuality has now apparently hit epidemic proportions.
Describing homosexuality as the result of demonic spirits, Rev. Prof. Martey said in addition to the counseling, they will be praying for them and we will let them go through a vigorous spiritual exercise and if it is spiritual, it will come out, they will be free.
In July Western Regional Minister Paul Evans Aidoo called for the immediate arrest of all gays and lesbians in his region.
Speaking to radio station Joy FM on July 20, Aidoo disputed a recent estimation that Ghana’s gay and lesbian population totals 8,000. “I don’t believe it; nobody believes it. We do not see them,” he said, adding, “All efforts are being made to get rid of these people in society.”
--Care2
Ghana's current president, John Evans Atta Mills, recently urged the public to fight all moral vices. He classified homosexuality and lesbianism right alone side child prostitution and drug abuse on his list of vices to be avoided.
He said drug abuse, armed robbery, child prostitution, homosexuality, lesbianism as well as rape, defilement and other sex-related crimes were on the increase to day, attesting to the high rate of immorality prevalent in the society.