The leader of the Anglican Church in Ghana has spoken out about the government’s plan to implement even harsher laws criminalising the LGBTQIA+ community in the West African nation – saying homosexuality shouldn’t be criminalised.
Archbishop Cyril Kobina Ben-Smith made the comments to the BBC last week as Ghana prepares to implement a new law that makes simply identifying as an LGBTQIA+ person a criminal offence.
It also outlaws any form of advocacy on behalf of sexual minorities or anything deemed to be promotion of “LGBTQ activities.”
God loves them
“Our point in our province is very clear: we do not support the criminalisation of gay persons,” Archbishop Ben-Smith told the English language broadcaster.
“The whole concept of … LGBT people, it’s not new here. They have lived in this country for a long time, and we’ve lived with them. They’ve never been a problem.”
Archbishop Ben-Smith said that the Anglican Church in West Africa does not condone same-sex relationships, but that didn’t mean it was the government’s place to criminalise them.
“We believe that God created male and female, so … we hold on to the traditional view,” he said.
But Archbishop Ben-Smith went on to say that the LGBTQIA+ community in Ghana are still “all children of God” and that “God loves them.”
Already illegal but new law goes further
Homosexuality was already illegal in Ghana with penalties of up to three years in prison, but the new Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Law extends that penalty beyond sexual acts to include simply expressing identities and public communication.
Those who neglect to report such activities also face up to three years in prison, but journalists and legal and medical professionals will be exempted from the “duty to report” part of the law.
Archbishop Ben-Smith is not only the head of the Anglican Church in Ghana.
As the Anglican Primate of West Africa, he is also the spiritual leader of nearly two million Anglicans across Cameroon, Cape Verde, Gambia, Guinea, Liberia, Senegal and Sierra Leone and one of the highest-ranking members of the global Anglican Communion.
Ghana is just the latest African nation to clamp down further on the civil rights of LGBTQIA+ people, with Senegal and Uganda also increasing penalties or creating new offences in recent years.
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