I will resign if Akufo-Addo legalizes homosexuality - Speaker

Speaker of Parliament, Professor Aaron Mike Oquaye has threatened to stage a walkout should the House consider any bill in legalizing same-sex marriage in Ghana.

The academician and cleric says homosexuality is against his Christian faith and will not be part of any agenda to legalize same-sex marriage.

“If anybody should bring such a thing to parliament and I have to preside over that I will rather resign than subscribe to this delusion,” Prof Oquaye told Paul Adom-Otchere in a yet to be aired interview for Good Evening Ghana current affairs programme scheduled for Thursday 10 May 2018.

The United Nation’s Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, Prof. Philip Alston some few weeks ago described Ghana’s Speaker of Parliament, Prof. Mike Oquaye, as deluded over his comments on gay rights.

Addressing a group of religious leaders who paid a courtesy call on him in February this year, Prof. Oquaye insisted that the current crop of parliamentary leadership would not endorse an act that majority of Ghanaians abhor.

“If you tell me that a man must sleep with a man so as to show his human rights for Ghana, I can assure you that our Parliament is a real micropause of the rule of Ghana. Ghanaians do not support gay rights and nobody is going to make any law that will support this kind of thing.”

Prof. Alston reacting to the comments said , “I believe that if he thinks there is not a very significant proportion of gay people in Ghana, he is deluding himself. You cannot wish away a physical fact. The percentage of gay people in any population is significant.

“I don’t think it is appropriate for politicians to publicly align themselves with hateful positions against any other population…I think if he comes out and says that people with a certain kind of sexual orientation are not allowed to be themselves in this country that is equally unacceptable, that is what human rights are all about.’’

However, the Speaker has threatened to give up his job as head of the legislature should it consider any attempt to legalize homosexuality.

Prof Oquaye said homosexuality is “very, very evil [and] dangerous [and] the church cannot allow it”. “God loves the sinner but He hates sin. We love them, we will teach them and get them out of that miserable situation,” Prof Oquaye added.