Recent events in relation to the passage of the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill 2024 have taken me down memory lane.
Parliament unanimously passed the Bill (also known as the anti-LGBTQ+ Bill) on Wednesday, February 28. Of particular interest to me is Majority Leader, Alexander Afenyo-Markin’s objection to custodial sentencing as prescribed under the Bill.
Per the parliament-approved Bill, the sanctions for persons who will be found culpable are:
- A minimum custodial sentence of three (3) years and a maximum of five (5) years for individuals found to be wilfully promoting, sponsoring, or supporting LGBTQ+ activities.
- A person guilty of engaging in activities of LGBTQ+ will face a minimum custodial sentence of six (6) months and a maximum of three (3) years.
After reading these punitive measures, memories of 15th July, 2022 filled my brain. On this day, I wrote an article titled, “The Akoto Lante-Samaritan and the advocacy to decriminalise petty offences.”
Here are excerpts:
The Akoto Lante -Samaritan
Akoto Lante is a suburb of Accra.
Samaria is the ancient, historic, biblical name used for the central region of the Land of Israel, bordered by Judea to the south and Galilee to the north- Wikepedia. People who hail from Samaria are called Samaritans just as someone from Ghana is Ghanaian.
The parable of the Good Samaritan is told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke. Although Samaritans and Jews despised each other, this Samaritan helped an injured Jew. Hence, he was called the Good Samaritan.
Ghanaians and Nigerians consider each other as brothers and sisters. However, recent developments have strained the fraternal relationship a wee bit. That’s because the Nigerians are alleged to be involved in almost every crime in the country lately. Consequently, Nigerians are beginning to gain the status of ‘Jews’ in the eyes of their Ghanaian ‘siblings’.
In this write up, I have decided to name the main character as Akoto Lante-Samaritan because what he did for a Nigerian who was allegedly caught stealing a mobile phone in the area, is similar to what the biblical Samaritan did for the Jew who was left helpless after being beaten for a crime we were not told about.
The man I have christened Akoto Lante –Samaritan, is believed to be an opinion leader in the community. But for him, the 22-year-old Nigerian, Aliu John, could have suffered an instant justice for the theft which took place on Saturday, May 13, 2022. In a characteristic deep-voiced male Ga intonation, the Akoto Lante –Samaritan could be heard telling his compatriots to stop beating the alleged phone thief. Instead, he led them to take the stealer to the most filthily choked gutter in the area.
This issue caught my attention because first, it is news to me that a typical ‘Akoto Lantean’ will choose to be this nice to a thief. Alas, civilization has evolved and my Akoto Lante compatriots have not been left behind. Forget about the fact that the Akoto Lante –Samaritan was a lone voice. Remember the fact that he got his people to do what for me, is the lesser of two evils- instant justice, to wit, illegally subjecting a suspect to punishment. They could have lynched him you know!
There is no doubt that what he led the mob to do amounted to taking the law into their own hands, but in an innovative way. Is this commendable or condemnable? What beats my mind though is how an ordinary law-illiterate resident of Akoto-Lante could think and act instantaneously on using community service for a phone thief while those we pay to think about our penal justice system enjoy the pecks of their office while supervising a cos-90 colonial relic of a law on petty offences. Why should it take us this long to do what is obviously a better option. Eh?
It goes without saying, therefore, that the Akoto Lante Samaritan has offered a shining example of how we can make community service work. I therefore have no doubt that his line of action is commendable.”
Custodial sentencing for LGBTQ+ practitioners and their allies
My research shows that there are four main aims of custodial sentencing: 1. Incapacitation (to protect other people); 2. Rehabilitation (using education and treatment programmes to change offender behaviour); 3. Retribution (to show society and the victim’s family that the offender has been forced to pay for their actions); and 4. Deterrence (to prevent the offender re-offending and demonstrate to society the consequences of similar actions).
From all that I have heard so far, it seems to me that the sponsors of the Bill ensured it has custodial sentence due to incapacitation, retribution and deterrence. Rehabilitation which has to do with using education and treatment programmes to change offender behaviour is lost on them.
I say so because, we all know that our prisons, in their current state, will not make rehabilitation possible. That is what Mr Afenyo-Markin is shouting through the roof about.
This is the Majority Leader’s statement that pricked my mind- “I am not here being an advocate for LGBTQ, I am looking at how we can reintegrate, how we can deal with the issue in a way that it will not get worse.
Sodomy takes its root from the prisons, people get sodomized in our prisons and in our cells. I am a practitioner of the law, I have done criminal cases for many years and sometimes when your clients are being sent to cells, the Police themselves will tell you to make sure that he is not taken to Accra central. You ask why, and they tell you that this thing is done there. They tell us. Why are we pretending that we don’t know the everyday story on our streets?
How does conviction and incarceration solve the problem? For me, on the balance, since it is a behavioural challenge, engage some clinical psychologists on it. I engaged them prior to my views publicly and three of them I engaged, they told me clearly that when dealing with issues of behavioural addictions, you don’t play the hard ball to get solutions, do you incarcerate a drug addict? You create a space for rehabilitation, that rehabilitation will require some therapy or some procedure to get the person out of that behaviour, you don’t put the person in a situation where that behaviour will be reinforced.
So, you say the person is gay, or lesbian and you throw the person in jail, will you get the result that you want? I beg to differ.” He said in an interview with Berla Mundi on the New Day show on TV3 on Thursday, February 29, 2024.
And I, am hearing his shouts because it reminds me of a statement by the Director of Programmes, at Institute for Human Rights and Development in Africa, Mr. Edmund Foley on a TV programme I watched before writing the article aforementioned- “As the economic circumstances become more and more difficult for the ordinary man, people are committing crimes not as social defiance, but simply because they are too poor to take care of themselves.”
Mr. Foley quipped, “Steal two tubers of yam and you are going to sit in prison. We need to ask ourselves as a nation why we should continue to spend that GHC1.80 for three years on that person.”
To take a cue from the earlier quote, it is possible that some of the persons who may find themselves at the wrong side of the anti-gay bill may be people who just want to eke out a living in this difficult economic situation. They may not be gay or lesbian, yet are likely to promote the issue in one way or the other to earn a few coins. And you want to imprison and spend GHC1.80 a day on them for 5 years?
LGBTQ+ explained
Let’s come to the matter of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ+).
- Lesbian: A woman who is sexually or romantically attracted exclusively to other women.
- Gay: Sexually or romantically attracted to people of one’s own sex (especially of a man).
- Bisexual: Used to describe a person who experiences emotional, romantic and/or sexual attractions to, or engages in romantic or sexual relationships with, more than one sex or gender.
- Transgender: Describes a person whose gender identity is different from the gender they were assigned at birth.
- Queer: Relating to a sexual or gender identity that does not correspond to established ideas of sexuality and gender, especially heterosexual norms.
My readings around the subject reveals to me that this state of being can be caused by both mental and physical reasons.
The physical reasons, which could also be termed biological, stems from instances where one person has both male and female genitalia, thus elects to undergo surgery to assume a preferred gender, which may contradict with the physically visible outlook of that individual. In plain language, a muscularly built person who was born with both vagina and penis decides to undergo operation to take off the penis and leave the vagina.
With regard to the mental reasons, the Chief Executive Officer of the Mental Health Authority, Dr Akwasi Osei had this to say on Onua TV in October 2021, “some were born with an inborn tendency of abnormal hormonal imbalance, which can be corrected. Others also involved themselves in this sodomy because friends and relatives are into it. Some of those practicing the LGBTQI+ are born with estrogen and testosterone disorders.”
This view, is clearly in tune with the one espoused by Mr. Afenyo-Markin. This is a recap, “For me, on the balance, since it is a behavioural challenge, engage some clinical psychologists on it. I engaged them prior to my views publicly and three of them I engaged, they told me clearly that when dealing with issues of behavioural addictions, you don’t play the hard ball to get solutions, do you incarcerate a drug addict? You create a space for rehabilitation, that rehabilitation will require some therapy or some procedure to get the person out of that behaviour, you don’t put the person in a situation where that behaviour will be reinforced.”
It’s time to go
Against this background, I have been asking myself why Sam George and co want to put people who need help to get out of their ‘situation,’ into jail? Then we spend GHC1.80 on them per day for food, not to talk about water and electricity, on them?
Why are we not learning from the example of the Akoto-Lante Samaritan? Why are we bent on “showing society and the victim’s family that the offender has been forced to pay for their actions”? Actions which, from what we are learning, are influenced by causal factors beyond their control.
Miracles Aboagye’s love for women
I have been paying attention to the public discourse of the Director of Communication for the Bawumia Campaign, Dennis Miracles Aboagye. Expectedly, his views on every issue on the economy and governance that is presented to him for discussion is skewed. However, on Saturday, March 23, 2024, he won my heart on the topic for discussion on KeyPoints on TV3- Anti-LGBTQ+ Bill.
Read him- “Let us correct this misrepresentation, the President of the republic has been quite emphatic on his position on LGBTQI+. He has said so categorically. I am not a gay, I love women, women are beautiful. Nobody from NDC or NPP supports gayism. Do you know how much women mean to me? Do you how I adore and appreciate women and the things they bring to us as men?
As politicians, do you know the stress we go through? You are sleeping at 1:00am and you are receiving phone calls from constituents. The only thing in this world that calms our nerves and reduces our stress and ensures that all these things do not knock us out of the face of this earth earlier than God has given us, is women. Because when you go home to your woman, that peace of mind that the woman gives you, I don’t think Martin Kpebu can give me. And there is no way whatsoever that I will have interest in Martin Kpebu.
The medical doctors tell us that through no fault of some people, and I am choosing my words carefully. Through no fault of some people, they may have some biological and hormonal imbalances that sometimes knock them into this unfortunate, despicable and sinful act of a man having some form of emotional or sexual sentiments for another man. Then they tell us that there is a cure and there is a way they can come out of this. If you have a cousin or nephew, 14 or 15 years old, who exhibits such traits, your singular responsibility is to take him to a facility and get a cure for him,” he said amid giggling by the other panellists.
Now read me- I am not gay. I love women. I am married to a woman. I have three children. I don’t support homosexuality. But I don’t want persons found to be LGBTQ+ to be imprisoned. They should be helped if they are willing to submit themselves to it.
Having said that, it is equally important that we protect our cultural values. Therefore, those who publicly promote homosexuality by enticing innocent children into the practice should be punished the Akoto-Lante Samaritan way.
Let’s not worsen the congestion in our prisons by sending persons who can be made to contribute meaningfully to our development efforts, there.
Shalom – That’s good bye in Hebrew.
Let God Lead! Follow Him directly, not through any human.
The writer is the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Columnist of the Year- 2022. He is the author of two books whose contents share knowledge on how anyone desirous of writing like him can do so. Eric can be reached via email [email protected]