Fifteen famend authorized, tutorial and civil society professionals have stuffed a memorandum difficult the anti-gay laws submitted to Parliament.
Within the memorandum, they contend that the Promotion of Correct Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Household Values Invoice 2021, which seeks to criminalise LGBTQ+ and adjoining actions, is an “impermissible invasion of the inviolability of human dignity.”
To push the anti-LGBTQ+ will likely be to problem Ghana’s structure and democracy, in addition they argued within the 18-page doc.
The Invoice prescribes that individuals of the identical intercourse who have interaction in sexual exercise might spend as much as 10 years in jail.
Help for the LGBTQ+ group would even be criminalised.
Among the many signatories to the memo are Professor Kofi Gyimah-Boadi, Dr. Rose Kutin-Mensah, Professor H. Kwasi Prempeh, Professor Audrey Gadzekpo, Professor Kwame KariKari, Akoto Ampaw and Professor Raymond Atuguba.
They be part of varied human rights teams, together with United Nations human rights consultants, which have described the Invoice as state-sponsored discrimination and violence in opposition to LGBTQ+ individuals.
The Invoice has additionally sparked petitions for its withdrawal and protests at Ghana’s embassy in just a few western international locations.
Their memorandum, which is in response to the decision by Parliament for written memos on the Anti-LGBTQ+ Invoice, countered varied arguments in favour of the Invoice, just like the declare that it’s a menace to the Ghanaian household unit and household values.
They famous that “the proposers of this far-reaching declare haven’t offered any information or proof to recommend that there’s such a menace, past a resort to some dogmatic spiritual tenets and so-called Ghanaian household values.”
In response to the spiritual arguments made in favour of the Invoice, the signatories to the memo mentioned “Christ’s message was/is that we must always love our neighbour and never be judgmental and promote the hate and bigotry that many self-styled Christians exhibit and search to impose on Ghanaian society.”
As well as, they pressured that Ghana was a secular democracy consistent with Article 18 of the structure, “not a theocratic Christian or Islamic Republic or an African conventional monarchy or chiefdom.”
“In different phrases, whereas it permits Christian, Islamic, African conventional and different spiritual beliefs and practices to exist in concord with each other as elementary rights, our Structure rightfully forbids the imposition of a non secular dogma, whether or not Christian or Islamic or conventional on Ghanaians.”
Their memo additionally contained references to Supreme Courtroom judgements like NPP v. IGP in November 1992 which affirmed the suitable of the individuals to assemble and reveal in opposition to the Public Order Decree 1972.
“In international locations that follow true democracy, supporters and opponents of each conceivable trigger are given freedom to affiliate and categorical their views,” the choose declared in that case.
They thus urged the Parliamentary Choose Committee on Constitutional, Authorized and Parliamentary Affairs to reject the Invoice and “to not create a society the place the state by way of laws imposes one view of ‘correct human sexual rights’.”
