Most Americans also Oppose Same-Sex Relations a Ghanaians

Like their American counterparts, Ghanaians have always known about same-sex relationships in their society. But nobody really organized the members of the societal mainstream to raise any hue or Caine about the practice of same-sex relationships or homosexuality in the country, until it became a rough-and-ready political tool in the hands of religious conservatives and fundamentalists, largely hereabouts the West, as societies, paradoxically, began to increasingly move away from Theocentric or Theocratic cultural praxis to an increasingly scientifically oriented and secularized inclination to the extent of near-absolute decadence, as the so-called Age of Reason appeared to have completely overcome and superseded the primal religiosity of human communities. I guess, one could almost aptly describe it as a form of “Retro-Nostalgia” or a dubious “Renaissance” of the long-forgotten “Good, Old Days,” that were not really good, at all, but a climate of unenlightened barbarism and savagery “sanctified” by the invention of the Divine and the Supernatural.

In the process, as with all cycles of human progression and the confused or tangled conflict between Science and Morality, the apparently discrete bifurcation between Science and Technology, on the one hand, and the seismic or seismological disturbance of established cultural protocol resulted in a sort of “Blowback Effect” and the eventual acceptance of that which had been hitherto envisaged to be revoltingly iniquitous and abominable. The preceding pretty much explains why not very long ago, Ghana’s President Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, who partly spent his youthful years in the United Kingdom of Great Britain, instructively observed that he looked forward towards a historic moment in time, not too distant from the present, when Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Queer and Intersexual-Plus lifestyle and culture would become fully understood and tolerated, even if not fully accepted, by the overwhelming majority of the members of the dominant, contemporary heterosexual community, just as it was the case during the 1950s and the 1960s, up to the 1970s, when homosexuality was comfortably and, perhaps, even morally and self-righteously deemed to be an anathema in Great Britain.

Interestingly and instructively, as well, today British society has become increasingly tolerant of the LGBTQ+ subculture and lifestyle. It is crystal clear that Nana Akufo-Addo, as Ghana’s President is also widely and popularly known – and some would even say “affectionately known” – having had a first-hand experience of the evolution of British society during this momentous and most historic era, as well as the radical evolution of Western European societies at large, with regard to the tolerance and even a recognition and a public acceptance homosexuality and LGBTQ+ lifestyle and culture, is deeply concerned about not becoming personally caught up on the wrong side of history, at least futuristically or in retrospect, thus the apparent reluctance and hesitancy of the former Attorney-General and Minister of Justice in appending his signature and executive imprimatur, or seal of approval, to the Anti-Gay Bill that was recently passed into law, not quite yet, of course, by an overwhelming majority of the membership of Fourth-Republican Ghana’s 8^th Parliament.

In politics, it is often said that that a leader cannot move too far ahead of his/her people, or s/he would end up literally falling off the cliff. This clearly appears to be the extremely fine path and thin line that is being gingerly toed by both Ghana’s lame-duck President Akufo-Addo and Vice-President Mahamudu Bawumia, the Oxbridge and the Simon Fraser, Canada, doctoral-degree holder in Economics who is highly tipped to become Ghana’s next President in January 2025. For Dr. Bawumia’s main challenger and most formidable political opponent, to wit, the twice-defeated, one-term former President John “European Airbus Payola” Dramani Mahama, going into Ghana’s December 2024 Presidential Election is all a simple matter of political expediency, a matter just figuring out the easiest and the cheapest route to raking in the votes, being that the country’s main opposition party, the National Democratic Congress (NDC), whose Serial and Dynastic Presidential Candidate he has effectively become, there appears to be absolutely no electorally fetching alternative than to simply and “sensibly” ride on the crest of the high-tide wave of Anti-LGBTQ+ rage on the ground, as it were.

You see, the leadership of the National Democratic Congress claims to be ideologically positioned Left-of-Center, as it were, but it is rather the Right-of-Center-positioned or the relatively more ideologically conservative ruling New Patriotic Party whose leadership has effectively established nearly each and every one of all the direly needed social-intervention programs in the country, including the Akufo-Addo-implemented Fee-Free Senior High School System (FF-SHSS) and the former President John “The Gentle Giant” Agyekum-Kufuor-led government of the New Patriotic Party, which ruled the country from January 2001 to January 2009, which implemented the low-premium National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), closely patterned after the healthcare system of Ghana’s former colonial overlord, Britain, when the kleptocratic leadership of the National Democratic Congress was cynically and disdainfully telling Ghanaian citizens and voters that the possibility of the successful establishment of a low-premium National Health Insurance Scheme was a veritable pipedream. More than 20 years on, it is the leadership of the ruling New Patriotic Party that has solidly proven itself to be worthy of managing the affairs of the country for the foreseeable future.

Under the tenure of the late former President Jeremiah “Jerry” John Rawlings-led junta-like regime of the National Democratic Congress, which ruled the country from January 1993 to January 2001, what passed for a national healthcare policy was something called the Cash-and-Carry healthcare system, which was actually no viable healthcare policy at all, but a Social Darwinian-informed system that could only be more aptly described as a “Deathcare Policy,” under which the lumpen-poor and destitute who could not afford to pay for the services of professional healthcare providers were literally left to die. To be certain, there was a time during the tenure of President Rawlings when the siren of an ambulance heard on the streets of Accra, Ghana’s capital, was the source and butt of jokes.

In those days, it was often said that whenever one heard the siren of an ambulance, it was almost invariably about the corpse of a recently deceased person being conveyed to the mortuary or the morgue. As well, under the ragtag tenure of Mr. John Dramani Mahama, the 2024 Presidential Candidate of the country’s main opposition National Democratic Congress, the low-premium Agyekum-Kufuor-established National Health Insurance Scheme was literally and effectively ground to a screeching halt. So, one can perfectly understand why the leaders of the National Democratic Congress have been desperately trying to outdo one another in their deafening screams in favor of having President Akufo-Addo promptly sign the Anti-LGBTQI+ Bill into Law. Fat chance, we say!

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By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., PhD
Professor Emeritus, Department of English
SUNY-Nassau Community College
Garden City, New York
April 11, 2024
E-mail: [email protected]