Conversations about LGBTQ+ is all politics – Victoria Hamah

Victoria Lakshmi Hamah, a former deputy Communications Minister under the erstwhile John Dramani Mahama administration has stated that the growing conversation of homosexuality in Ghana is all politics.

According to her, organised religion is against homosexuality and religion has a huge position within the political sphere, so their action against homosexuality is to support the fundamental issues of the church.

“The conversation about homosexuality or LGBTQ+ is the question of politics because the consecutive element of society that is against it fundamentally is the church. You realise that the President acted swiftly when the Catholic Church came out and said close it down.

“Church or organised religion, you have to understand their position in the political society. How do we maintain the existing hegemony? So, the President’s reaction is to be able to support the fundamental issues of the church because these values of being anti-gay are important for the church to maintain its moral codes,” Vicky Hamah told Paul Adom-Otchere on Good Evening Ghana on Tuesday, February 23, 2021.

She explained that when the moral codes are maintained, it is able to maintain the border polity.

She added that societies are organised through the distribution of wealth and it is the few people within the society who control wealth therefore anyone who would like to understand where the church is coming from must understand society from the materialist perspective.

“Organised religion does not have any productive structures; they maintain ideas and so it is important to understand the framework and how the church work,” Vicky Hamah noted.

The 1992 Constitution of Ghana is silent when it comes to issues relating to homosexuality even though sodomy is a misdemeanour in Ghana, the crime is rarely prosecuted.

Under the Criminal Code, 1960 (Act 29), as amended to 2003 [R1.3] Section 104, “Whoever has unnatural carnal knowledge of any person of the age of sixteen years or over without his consent shall be guilty of a first-degree felony and shall be liable on conviction to imprisonment for a term of not less than five years and not more than twenty-five years; Or “Of any person of sixteen years or over with his consent is guilty of a misdemeanour…”

Unnatural carnal knowledge is defined “as sexual intercourse with a person in an unnatural manner or with an animal”.

On 16 July 2012, the government of the day adopted the Constitutional Review Commission’s recommendation that the Supreme Court should rule on whether same-sex acts should be legalised.