Ghana’s top court upholds law that makes gay sex a crime

Ghana’s Supreme Court upheld a 60-year-old law criminalizing gay sex on Wednesday. The court is also considering whether or not to make the penalties for having gay sex even harsher in a more recent bill.

The Ghanaian Criminal Code of 1960 says that sexual relations between people of the same sex are banned in the country, calling them “unnatural carnal knowledge.”

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Those who are caught having sex with a person of the same gender face three years in jail.

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The court dismissed a lawsuit challenging the ban, saying that the reasons for the dismissal would be given later, Justice Paul Baffoe-Bonnie said.

The Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill would strengthen the gay-sex ban, lengthening jail time, and the government would crack down on people it suspected of promoting LGBTQ+ lifestyles and identities.

The bill is currently awaiting the approval of President Nana Akufo-Addo, who will decide whether or not it is constitutional.

In a press release about the bill in February, David Stacy, Human Rights Campaign vice president of government affairs, called the legislation “a cruel bill that violates the fundamental rights of LGBTQI+ people and allies throughout Ghana. Every single lawmaker who voted to pass this bill is wrongly using their power to strip away the basic humanity of the people they are supposed to represent.”

HRC noted that LGBTQ+ people face high levels of discrimination in Ghana, citing incidents of violence and discrimination against queer Ghanaians in the last few years.

“In February 2021, police raided and shut down a LGBTQ+ resource center. In May that same year, 21 LGBTQ+ activists were arrested during a human rights assembly in Ho, Ghana, and have not yet been released. LGBTQI+ people throughout the country have faced evictions and various other forms of systematic discrimination,” the press release stated.

Ghana, like many countries colonized by the British, has had laws banning same-sex acts since the 1860s when they were occupied and under British imperial rule.

The military junta ruling Burkina Faso, another West African country, recently said that homosexual acts are now an offense punishable by law. “Henceforth homosexuality and associated practices will be punished by the law,” Justice Minister Edasso Rodrigue Bayala said, according to the international news organization Agence France-Presse.

Likewise, a year ago, Uganda’s president signed one of the world’s cruelest anti-gay bills. The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act 2023 mandates long prison sentences and permits executions for some same-sex activities. The bill allows for gay people to be executed by firing squad for consensual sex. 

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