The church’s complicity in dehumanizing the LGBTQ community in Ghana

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06/09/2021

The West African country of Ghana is one of the most homophobic countries in the world today. It not only refuses to recognize same-sex unions, but it also criminalizes consensual same-sex acts with imprisonment of up to three years. Those who are arrested for being gay are then often subjected to further physical, psychological or sexual abuse as a result of their captivity. A 2018 Human Rights Watch report documents numerous accounts of horrendous anti-LGBTQ abuse and “corroborates that LGBT people are often victims of mob attacks, physical assault, sexual assault, extortion, discrimination in access to housing, education and employment, and family rejection on the grounds of their sexual orientation or gender identity. In an environment in which homophobic views abound, and few are willing to publicly come to the defense of LGBT people, it is easy for violence to flourish.”Back in late January the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference, or GCBC, issued a public statement calling for the government to shut down Ghana’s first LGBTQ community center. In this effort the bishops joined forces with an established Ghanaian anti-gay hate group known as the “National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values,” which was founded in 2013 and is supported, in part, by wealthy foreign sponsors such as the U.S.–based network “World Congress of Families,” which both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign have identified as a hate group.

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