A leading newspaper in Ghana said people in the country should reject LGBTI people.
An editorial in the state run Ghana newspaper, The Ghanaian Times, urged readers to ‘reject’ the LGBTI community.
Titled, ‘Let’s Unite to Reject LGBT’, it described LGBTI people as ‘alien’ and having ‘unacceptable values’.
‘We are referring to the ferocious attempt to influence Ghana to change our laws to contain the rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) people,’ the editorial read.
The editorial condemned the ‘international conspiracy to impose foreign bisexual orientation into our social and cultural values’.
The newspaper published the editorial as a response to UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s comments that anti-gay laws in Commonwealth countries were ‘wrong’.
‘Across the world, discriminatory laws made many years ago continue to affect the lives of many people, criminalising same-sex relations and failing to protect women and girls,’ May said at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London.
The newspaper argued that while it supported human rights of all humans, ‘we are equally against LGBT rights’.
‘We must all unite to keep at bay this ferocious attempt to debase our cultural values,’ the editorial read.
‘Insofar as a tiny minority has the right to pursue its own “physiological disabilities”, it also behooves us to protect the sanctity of divinity and the decency of the human race.’
The law is against LGBTI people
Homosexuality is illegal in Ghana with a punishment of up to three years in prison.
A Human Rights Watch report released earlier this year showed LGBTI people in Ghana face extreme levels of violence.
Ghananians described being chased out of villages with machetes and being violently raped. But many are too scared to tell the police.
‘Homophobic statements by local and national government officials, traditional elders, and senior religious leaders foment discrimination and in some cases, incite violence,’ said Wendy Isaack, LGBT rights researcher at HRW.
