The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby has said he is “gravely concerned” by proposed legislation in Ghana, which reiterates a ban on same-sex marriage while prohibiting LGBT indoctrination.
The bill is supported by the Anglican Church of Ghana but Archbishop Welby said he intends to make his concerns known to the Anglican Archbishop of Ghana in the coming days.
“We are a global family of churches, but the mission of the church is the same in every culture and country: to demonstrate, through its actions and words, God’s offer of unconditional love to every human being through Jesus Christ,” Welby said.
Ghana is one of 69 nations with active anti-sodomy laws and stipulates a prison term of three years for partaking in homosexual sex.
The Anglican Church in Ghana has noted that it does not condemn persons with homosexual tendencies but “absolutely condemns the sinful acts and activities they perform.”
Last February, Ghana’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference (GCBC) also came out in full support of the legislation, called “Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021,” and appealed to the government not to yield to efforts to impose an LGBT agenda in the African country.
In its statement, the GCBC said that “the rights of homosexuals as persons do not include the right of a man to marry a man or of a woman to marry a woman. For the Church, this is morally wrong and goes against the purpose of marriage.”
The European Union “should not impose their so-called values and beliefs on Ghanaians who are against homosexuality,” said the statement, adding that “the laws, values and cultural beliefs in Ghana do not allow for such practices.”
“We, the Catholic Bishops of Ghana write to condemn all those who support the practice of homosexuality in Ghana,” said the president of the bishops’ conference, Archbishop Philip Nameeh. “We do this because the Roman Catholic Church is opposed to this abominable practice.”
The bishops urged “the Executive and the Legislature never to be cowed down or to succumb to the pressure to legalize the rights of LGBTQI in Ghana,” adding that the Bible deems homosexuality as a “perversion and a pagan abomination.”
“To choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity or for marriage is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of God’s sexual design,” the text stated. “Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life, and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living.”
Last April, Cardinal Philippe Ouédraogo of Burkina Faso similarly called on Christian families to “rebel” against LGBT lobbies that wish to “impose same-sex marriage” on the world.
“While adopting the positive values of modernity, as active agents of the future of the world, African Christian families should rebel against the imperialism of certain lobbies and associations that advocate and want to impose same-sex marriage,” the cardinal said in his Easter homily.
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