ACCRA, Ghana (LifeSiteNews) — Ghana Member of Parliament (MP) Sam George recently defended a bill that would criminalize homosexual behavior — and its promotion — against pressure from the West to quash the legislation.
“Ghana is not the 51st state of the United States. Ghana is a sovereign state on its own,” George said on New Dawn Africa Channel when asked to comment on U.S. Department of State spokesman Matthew Miller’s denunciation of the bill, which was sponsored by George.
“I’d expect Matthew Miller to respect the tenets of democracy,” said George, stressing that Ghana is “opposed to cultural imperialism” and adding that Miller “should be more interested in the loss of life of (c)hildren in American schools to gun violence.”
The legislation, which has not yet been signed into law, punishes homosexual behavior with six months to three years in jail, and also punishes the support or promotion of such behavior with three to five years in prison.
The bill includes an outright ban on same-sex “marriage,” same-sex adoption, and other public displays of homosexual or transgender behavior. The bill also seeks to clamp down on transgender ideology by banning mutilating procedures for gender-confused individuals.
New Dawn asked George if he was concerned that Ghana might face treatment from the West similar to the economic punishment imposed on Uganda when it enacted its own anti-homosexuality law. The World Bank halted all new lending to Uganda in 2023 after the law was passed, driving them to seek funds from China, and the Biden administration officially removed Uganda from an African trade deal last year in response to the anti-sodomy law.
“I expect the leaders of our country … to stand shoulder-high and tell the American people: You either do business with us on our terms or you can walk,” George replied. “American businesses that operate in Ghana are not in Ghana because of LGBTQ. They are in Ghana because they make a profit.”
George advised companies that “want to lose $100 million in profit” to “pack up and go,” because “another company will come into Ghana and do business.”
“We’re not puppets and stooges of the West,” George declared. He pointed out that Western countries, including the U.S., are hypocritical for continuing to trade with Middle Eastern countries like Qatar that legally punish homosexuality with jail time. He suggested that this is because the U.S. profits handsomely from business with these nations.
“Qatar spent 22 billion U.S. dollars hosting the World Cup in 2022. Eighteen billion out of those 22 billion went to American and Western businesses. Qatar buys a billion dollars of military hardware every year from America,” George noted.
The Ghana politician also highlighted the fact that international banks like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank sacrifice profit by turning down loans from African nations. In the face of trade pressure running contrary to African values, George called upon African countries to trade more among themselves.
Asked to elaborate on why Ghana’s anti-sodomy bill is so important, George suggested that it is tied up with the definition of the family, which is in turn core to a nation’s identity.
“Let’s bear in mind, the people who lose their identity have lost their nation. The European and American communities and society have failed because they’ve redefined family. They’ve lost the sense of what it means to be family,” George said.
He went on to assert that Western nations are attempting to “import” the “mental disorder” of homosexuality into Ghana.
“Our identity as Ghanians is a principal matter for us,” he said. “And that’s why we’ve pushed this bill.”
He further pointed that homosexuality takes both a financial and psychological toll upon countries, citing money spent to care for AIDS patients as well as the cost of suicide, more common among homosexuals.
“The Ghana AIDS Commission in 2021 spent $200 million buying anti-retroviral drugs to take care of HIV/AIDS for people who chose to have sex with men … Do you know how many school buildings in my constituency $200 million would have built, or how many hospital beds that would have created?”
“And so when somebody says that it is not a pressing issue, it’s because they don’t understand the full effect of homosexuality on society,” George said.
“Go and check the American system and see how many people are committing suicide because of the effect of homosexuality,” he continued. “The CDC says that homosexuals are 400% more likely to be suicidal.”
George clarified that Ghana’s anti-sodomy bill provides harsher penalties for advocating LGBTQ behavior than for the act of sodomy itself, and that it targets “all technological and media platforms” that may promote such behavior.
“You cannot use technological and media platforms to propagate stuff that is illegal in Ghana … you cannot be a social media influencer and create content that is contrary to the law of the land,” he said, adding that one cannot use media to promote anything that is illegal in Ghana, including, say, money laundering.
“In fact, if you look at our bill … the punishment for advocacy is higher than the punishment for the act itself, because we want to protect the innocence of our children,” George said.
Liberals and mainstream media outlets have often protested Ghana’s bill with concerns that it will increase the mistreatment of homosexuals, but George pointed out that the legislation actually punishes those who mistreat homosexuals.
“We actually impose a punishment of up to three years on anybody who carries out extrajudicial treatment … you cannot on your own decide that you’re going to beat the person or lynch the person. If you do that, you will go to jail,” George said. “So this law is a very balanced law that seeks to protect the fundamental human rights of all manner of persons.”
He pointed out that framers of Ghana’s constitution were “very concerned about the morality of our country and the moral fiber of our country.”
“If you read Article 39 of our constitution, it actually imposes a duty on the state to ensure that the proper … social cultural norms are integrated into the moral fiber of the state.”
Following Scripture and the 2,000-year Tradition of the Church, the Catholic faith holds that homosexual acts are a “sin that cries to heaven” and “intrinsically disordered” because they are “contrary to the natural law” and “close the sexual act to the gift of life.”
“They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states. The Church proclaims that human sexuality, as created by God, is designed for the conjugal love exclusively between a man and woman and finds it sole legitimate expression within marriage.
Numerous studies have also demonstrated the harmful effects of homosexuality, which is associated with numerous life-threatening diseases like HIV/AIDS and various cancers, and psychological issues that cannot be explained by one’s culture’s “acceptance” of LGBT ideology.
After one study was released that found teenagers who self-identify as homosexual are five times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to attempt suicide, Peter Sprigg of Family Research Council commented that the takeaway finding is not that teenagers suffering homosexual tendencies are allegedly marginally less likely to commit suicide in a “supportive” environment but that, overall, such teenagers are so many times more likely to commit suicide than their non-homosexual peers – “a difference that far overwhelms any difference caused by the ‘social environment.’”
Dr. Neil Whitehead, a scientific research consultant from New Zealand and author of the book My Genes Made Me Do It – a scientific look at sexual orientation, pointed out in a paper available on the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) website that the authors of one study done in the Netherlands “were surprised to find so much mental illness in homosexual people in a country where tolerance of homosexuality is greater than in almost all other countries.”
Dr. Whitehead pointed out that “(i)n his cross-cultural comparison of mental health in the Netherlands, Denmark and the U.S., Ross (1988) could find no significant differences between countries – i.e. the greater social hostility in the United States did not result in a higher level of psychiatric problems.”