LGBT+ law to be passed in Ghana
Ghanaian lawmakers have proposed a measure that would make it illegal to be homosexual, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, or an ally, penalized by up to five years incarceration, in what may become one of the most extreme anti-LGBT+ laws in the world.
Not only would the bill criminalize LGBT+ people, but it would also make anyone who supports sexual minorities a criminal. Anyone fostering “sympathy” face a sentence of five to ten years in prison.
On Twitter, Sam Nartey George, a member of the opposition National Democratic Congress party and one of the bill’s eight sponsors, said he had been “overwhelmed” by the “huge support” he had received since the text was leaked.
In the meantime, the LGBT+ community in the area is believed to be in shambles. Nana Ama Agyemang Asante, a journalist in Ghana’s capital, Accra, told the newspaper that the legislation “stunned her with its substance, crudeness of language, and cruelty behind its goal.”
“I have spent my entire career as a journalist advocating for LGBT rights, so I can’t believe we have arrived at this point where they want to criminalize anything and everyone, even allies, intersex, and asexual people,” she said.
The director of LGBT+ Rights Ghana, which administered the now-defunct community center, Alex Kofi Donkor, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation: “people are horrified, outraged and scared”.