I won’t legalize same-sex marriage – Akufo-Addo

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo says same-sex marriage would not be legalised in Ghana under his watch.

He made it emphatically clear that so long as he remained the leader of the country, homosexual marriages would not be legalized.

“I have said it before, and let me stress it again, that it will not be under the Presidency of Nana Addo Dankwah Akufo-Addo that same-sex marriage will be legalized in Ghana.

“It will never happen in my time as President… Let me repeat, it will never happen in my time as President,” he stated when he joined the Mampong Ashanti Diocese of the Anglican Church for the installation of the second Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Ghana.

President Akufo-Addo has over the past two weeks been inundated with calls from the public, civil society, religious bodies and traditional authorities to state his position on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) movement and proscribe that practice that is seeking social and legal recognition in Ghana.

This followed the opening of an office space by the LGBTQ community in Ghana a forth night ago, at which a number of diplomats attended the ceremony ostensibly to lend support to the grouping.

But that happening was immediately condemned by the wider Ghanaian population, who hold that homosexuality and lesbianism ought not be tolerated in any guise or form because it violated the culture, religious norms and traditions of the country.

Anti-gay critics have also pressured government to proscribe the LGBTQ movement in Ghana, arguing that the practice of those sexual orientations was influenced by Western lifestyles, which risked destroying family life and units and the moral fiber of the Ghanaian society.

The Ghana Police Service last Wednesday closed down the LGBTQ Community office at Ashongman, an Accra suburb, following calls from some traditional and religious leaders and politicians to shut down that gay community space.

And the LGBTQ community says they feel unsafe in the country, and have urged government to ensure that they are not discriminated against and their rights are not violated.

Gay sex is one of felonies termed as unnatural sex under Ghana’s criminal code.

Meanwhile, anti-gay rights advocates, and religious groups, including the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council (GPCC), the Christian Council, the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference, the National Peace Council, the National Chief Imam and Traditional Authorities have urged government not to succumb to pressures from the West to legalise LGBTQ rights in the country.

Source: GNA