Civil society organizations are calling for the release of 21 LGBT people who were arrested in Ghana’s Volta region.
They were holding a meeting in the town of Ho on Thursday to discuss ways of protecting their rights in Ghana.
The police said they were arrested and detained for promoting an LGBT agenda at an unlawful assembly.
A court on Friday denied their bail application and the 21 are due to appear in court next week.
It isn’t unlawful to identify as LGBT in Ghana but sexual acts between males are illegal in the country.
Church ‘promoting violent discourse’
The homophobia and discrimination faced by the LGBT community in Ghana is “promoted” by three institutions, according to Dr Anima Adjepong, a US-based Ghanaian sociologist researching gender, sexuality and identity in West Africa.
“The government, the church or other religious institutions, and the media.
“They’ve worked really hard to miseducate the general population about what queer sexualities mean and what the implications of them are.”
There is no law in Ghana that says being LGBT is illegal. But same-sex relationships are criminalized by a criminal code which Dr Adjepong calls “completely vague” – introduced by the British when they ruled Ghana – that mentions “unnatural carnal knowledge”.
The code – which is rarely enforced – is interpreted by authorities as “penile penetration of anything other than a vagina”.
But after LGBT+ Rights Ghana opened its office, Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah called for laws that say “you cannot advocate for and promote LGBT activities in this country”.
Sarah Adwoa Safo, Minister for Gender and Children, said: “The criminality of LGBT is non-negotiable and our cultural practices also frown on it.”
Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo stated recently that same-sex marriage will “never” be legalized while he is president – but Dr Adjepong says this is “disingenuous”.
“No-one is asking for that. Right now queer people in Ghana are being attacked. They’re asking for the freedom to live safely and without fear of this kind of violence.”
The church, where the president made his statement, was significant though, Dr Adjepong suggests.
“In Ghana religious institutions have a lot of power.
“The church also advances this argument that queer people in Ghana are abhorrent. And really the church promotes violent discourse against queer people about ‘throwing them into the ocean’, about how they ‘don’t belong here’, about how they’re ‘bringing the downfall of the society’.”
The Christian Council of Ghana did not respond to requests for comment. But in a recent press release about the closure of LGBT+ Rights Ghana’s office, it said: “The Ghanaian people should not put the law into their own hands by… attacking persons known to be in homosexual unions.”
In the same press release, homosexuality is called an “affront to human dignity” and “not a human right”.
Dr Adjepong, who was raised a Christian, says homophobia in Ghanaian churches in the past “wasn’t as bad as it is now. The church has really taken to fever pitch”.
Aron, who was raised in England but speaks to us from Ghana, where he spends about a month of each year, says the difficulties LGBT people experience in the UK “are amplified to a different level within Ghana”.
“It’s a lot more difficult to express yourself because you don’t know what would happen if you were your true self, your 100% authentic self. It’s dangerous, it’s an act of defiance to do so out here.”
Aron’s friend Aba, who is also in Ghana but was born and raised in Britain, says LGBT safe spaces in the UK – like the one closed down in Accra – helped her find “great community and great people with shared interests and shared identity”.
Despite the increase in homophobia they say they’ve seen from the church, Dr Adjepong thinks “change is inevitable”.
“We are trying to create a different future in Ghana, and I believe we will be successful.
“For so many years there have been organizations in Ghana who have been doing this work. And so all of that work has made it possible for folks to be willing to step forward, to show themselves.”
Aron says the same. “Ghana currently is resisting natural change that is going to come – it’s inevitable.”
As for Linda? She just wants to know: “For how long will I be hiding? For how long won’t I be happy?”
“If I’m happy even for a day, I’m fulfilled.”
