The Coalition of Muslim Organisation of Ghana (COMOG) has submitted a memorandum to the Clerk to the Committee on Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs in support of the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021.
This was based on the request of Parliament on September 15, 2021 asking for written memorandum on the bill to allow for the public to make input.
Sharing the content of the memorandum to the public at a press briefing in Accra on Thursday, the COMOG President, Abdel-Manan Abdel-Rahman said the document which was made up of 26 signatories from representatives of various Islamic organisations seeks to highlight the dangers of homosexuality and its advocacy in the country.
The law prohibits certain activities of homosexuality as mentioned in Section 104 of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960, (ACT 29) as amended, criminalises “unnatural carnal knowledge,” he said, but added also that it totally ignored what he described as dangerous and insidious activities of well organised international and domestic LGBTQI+ rights activists. These, he went on, are funding, promoting, facilitating and recruiting unsuspecting persons, particularly the vulnerable poor youth.
“The inadequacy with this provision which also prohibits Sodomy is that, they both fail to deal with same sex activities between females, bisexuals, transgender, queer, intersex and other dubious variants of these deviants’ sexual behaviours and disorders that have become the lifestyle in certain parts of the West,” he said.
COMOG is of the view that a comprehensive and solution-based approach to criminalising lifestyles and activism of homosexuality while providing the opportunity to recant and receive the requisite medical, psychological, psychiatric, counselling and spiritual help was a step in the right direction.
Mr. Abdel Rahman also reiterated the need to protect state institutions from the manipulations of lobbyists and advocacy groups who seek to get “legitimacy and official cover for harmful projects.”
As a Muslim group, curbing the activities of homosexuality and its related activities, he said, was in tandem with the will of Allah and averting his wrath on the country.
The constitution, he also pointed out, mandated the state to encourage the integration of appropriate customary laws and values in the fabric of national life and, in so doing, protect the rights of Ghanaians to promote our valued socio-cultural rights.
“We strongly disclaim the activities of the LGBTQI+ as a Human Rights issue so far as their activities remain inimical to the culture, traditions, values and religious dispositions of this country just as polygamy is inimical to the culture, traditions and values of the West,” he said.
By Issah Mohammed