By Iddi Yire
Accra, Feb 23, GNA – Mr Godfred Yeboah Dame, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, has okayed the “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights And Ghanaian Family Values Bill”, which is before Parliament.
Mr Samuel Nartey George, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for Ningo/Prampram, and one of the sponsors of the Private Members’ Bill, speaking to the Parliamentary Press Corps, said the Attorney-General stated his opinion after a meeting with the Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.
The object of the Bill is to provide for proper human sexual rights and Ghanaian Family Values that proscribe lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (LGBTQ+) and related activities.
Mr George noted that the meeting was to discuss the Attorney-General’s earlier Memo to the Committee dated 19th October, 2022, on the Bill.
He said midway through the Attorney-General’s presentation, the Committee informed him that a number of the issues he was raising or had raised ,referenced to his memo , were issues that by virtue of the clause by clause consideration that the Committee had done, between 2021 and 2022.
They had, therefore, been taken care of by consequences of the works of the Committee.
Mr George said the Attorney-General’s memo dated 19th October, 2022, agreed largely with 80 to 85 per cent with the provisions of Bill.
He said the Attorney-General raised some fundamental issues on cost and on some human rights issues, adding: “We drew his attention yesterday that most of the issues he was raising were issues we had already dealt with”.
He said one of the concessions that had been made, earlier by the Committee was in regard to the issue of intersex.
“If you read the earlier Bill you will realise that we criminalised a lot of expressions of homosexuality as stated, but intersex was considered a biological abnormality.”
He said the Attorney-General agreed with the views of the committee and noted that “when we are not criminalising it, and we’re recognising even in the original Bill as a biological anomaly, then we should take it out of the Bill completely, so that the Bill focuses on the things that we are criminalising”.
Mr George said at the end of the meeting, there was consensus agreement among all members of the Committee.
He explained that after the meeting, he asked the Attorney-General’s permission to put the information out and he granted it.
“I asked him specifically if he thought that the current shape of the Bill that the Committee had worked, which the sponsors felt comfortably that it represents our aspirations, if he thought that it infringes on any fundamental human rights in Ghana and the Attorney-General responded that he did not see any conflict in our Bill with the Constitution in its current form.
He did not see any infringement on humans rights and that he actually supported the Bill, the MP said.
Mr George said the Attorney-General established four areas where he thought that the Bill was a welcome refreshing news to Ghana’s criminal jurisprudence.
“The first and foremost has to do with the issue of what is proper carnal knowledge And you know that when we look at section 104 (1) (b) of the Criminal Act where it talks about what is carnal knowledge and all.”
He said the Attorney-General held that that section of the nation’s Criminal Act as it stood today was actually discriminatory because it talked about penetration; and that penetration was only relative to men, and so it discriminates against women, who were having sex with women, stating that in this case one could not use section 104 of the Criminal Code because of the issue of penetration.
However, the Bill rectified that and the Attorney-General welcomed that as refreshing news.
Mr George said the second area had to do with marriages, and that the Attorney-General referenced in his memo the Marriages Act, Act 127, the Marriages Act 1884, 1985, where he said, that the Acts recognised Marriage as a Union between a husband and a wife.
He said the Attorney-General, however, felt that given today’s nuances, it was important that the nation had a new legislation that deepened this and made it clear that marriage could only be between a man and woman – as husband and wife – and not between two men as husband and wife.
He said the third area the Attorney-General approved was on the issue of void marriage.
He said the Marriage Act of Ghana did not recognise persons of the same sex and the Bill had a Clause that dealt with void marriages, which specified that even if one contracted a homosexual marriage outside of Ghana, in the jurisdiction of Ghana, it would be null and void before the law and the law would have no recognition of that union.
Mr George said the Bill strengthened the children’s Act, and that in Section 86 (k) it was clear that nobody from outside could come to adopt children if they were in the same sex relationships.
He said if the nation had a Bill criminalising fosterage and adoption of children in Ghana by persons who were LGBTQ, the Attorney-General believed that Bill was welcome.
“So, on these four reasons the Attorney-General yesterday gave us a clean bill of health, it is his opinion and he is the legal counsel to the Government and that has a lot of weight,” Mr George said.
“I can see that we now have a light at the end of the tunnel. We have reached the end of the tunnel and we’ll be bringing that report hopefully before the end of March or before this House rises and laying it before the House for debates on the floor.”
He said the Attorney-General made the point that the Bill was the first of its kind on the African continent.
GNA