Ghana approves family values bill prohibiting LGBT propaganda, promotion

(LifeSiteNews) — On May 26, Ghana’s parliament passed a bill banning LGBT propaganda in what Reuters predictably framed as “part of a broader crackdown on sexual minorities in West Africa.”

The “Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill” was sponsored by MP Rev. John Ntim Fordjour and bans “propaganda of, promotion of and advocacy for activities prohibited under this Act,” including LGBT identification and same-sex sexual activity. The bill further states that:

A person who produces, distributes, disseminates, publishes, broadcasts or makes available any material that promotes an act prohibited under this Act, or engages in any act aimed at changing public opinion on an act prohibited under this Act, commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a term of imprisonment of not less than five years and not more than 10 years.

The bill, which was unanimously recommended by the Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, passed on a voice vote. President John Dramani Mahama has signaled support and is considered likely to sign it. Ghanian religious leaders have been vocally in support of it. A 2024 version of the bill had failed due to legal challenges; President Nano Akufo-Addo, Mahama’s predecessor, had declined to sign it.

“West ​Africa has seen a raft of anti-LGBTQ legislation in recent ​months,” Reuters noted. “Senegalese President ⁠Bassirou Diomaye Faye in March signed a bill doubling the maximum prison term for same-sex sexual acts to 10 years and criminalizing any efforts to promote homosexuality. In September last ⁠year, lawmakers ​in Burkina Faso voted to criminalize same-sex sexual ​acts for the first time and to criminalize ‘behaviour likely to promote homosexual practices and similar practices.’”

Western groups have denounced Ghana’s parliament; the week before, Senegalese Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko had denounced ideological neo-colonialism at the National Assembly while defending Senegal’s new laws. “There is a kind of tyranny,” he said. “There are eight billion human beings in the world, but there is a small nucleus called the West which, because it has resources and controls the media, wants to impose it (homosexuality) on the rest of the world.”

The “crackdown” on LGBT ideology across West Africa (and beyond) over the past several years is, in fact, a backlash to the aggressive promotion of LGBT ideology by Western governments and international institutions across the developing world. African governments are responding to a concerted push by well-funded LGBT groups and NGOs to promote an ideology that most of these countries reject while forgetting that until very, very recently most Western nations had remarkably similar laws on the books.

In 1961, every single American state had “sodomy laws” banning a range of sex acts on the books. In fact, some states were still repealing long-unenforced laws as recently as 2023 (Maryland and Minnesota). Canada repealed its ban in 1969 but did not remove all restrictions on sexual behavior until the late 1980s. Regardless of how one views these laws — whether you are a libertarian or a conservative or something in between — they were the norm until a half-century ago, and in some instances much more recently.

Of course, the West began to repeal or overturn these laws as the sexual revolution and its bastard child secularization transformed our societies; many developing countries, by contrast, are still very religious. Many of them now see legislation as a necessary bulwark against Western attempts to force the sexual revolution and secularization on their own societies as well. Western countries see these laws as evidence of totalitarianism; many developing countries see them as social self-defense.