The Catholic Bishops of Ghana have condemned homosexual practices and demanded of the President to close down the newly opened office of Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgenders, Queer & Intersex (LGBTQI) individuals in Accra.
The bishops have also demanded of the President to reiterate the position of government on the subject as it assumes centre stage in public discourse in the country recently.
In a statement signed by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Tamale who is also the President of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference, Most Rev. Philip Naameh, the bishops described the practices of LGBTQI individuals as being at variance with the Christian faith.
“We call upon the President of the republic and Parliament to state unambiguously their position on the matter of homosexuals and its practice in Ghana,” the bishops have demanded.
Government, they said, should not be cowed into succumbing to pressure to allow homosexual practices to flourish in the country.
In the most powerful statement yet on LGBTQI by the Catholic Bishops since the latest national conversation on the subject erupted, the bishops quoted copiously relevant portions of the Bible which indicated unambiguously God’s abhorrence for homosexual practices.
The condemnation of homosexual practices by the bishops did not end with those engaged in unnatural activities but extended to those who supported it.
“We the Catholic Bishops of Ghana write to condemn all those who support the practice of homosexuality in Ghana,” they stated in their statement issues on Friday, February 19, 2021.
The Old Testament, the bishops pointed out, had described the practice as a perversion and a pagan abomination, and insisted that the practice was incompatible with creation stories as in Genesis.
“Since sexual activity was seen to be ordered to procreation and the continuance of the human race, any form of sexual activity other than heterosexual intercourse was against nature and was a clear violation of right reason,” the bishops stressed.
To choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity or for marriage was to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals of God’s sexual design, the statement continued.
For the Catholic Bishops “homosexual activity is not a complementary union able to transmit life and so it thwarts the call to a life that is based on self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living.
The Catholic Church rejects what it described as the “unfounded and demeaning assumption that the sexual behaviour of homosexual persons is always and totally compulsive and therefore they should not be blamed for their homosexual acts.”
The stance of the Catholic Bishops, notwithstanding, they have asked that the fundamental human rights of homosexuals be respected and not be harassed since they too were created by God in his own image.
Such rights nonetheless the bishops went on should not include “the right of a man to marry a man or for a woman to marry a woman.” This, the statement added, was morally wrong and went against God’s purpose for marriage.
By A.R. Gomda