US not promoting LGBTQ rights in Ghana, 'we want your gay children to be safe' - Ambassador

Madam Virginia Palmer, the United States Ambassador to Ghana has explained that the US is not promoting same-sex relationships in Ghana but that they are pushing for the rights of persons with that behaviour and or orientation to be respected.

“I also want to be really clear that we are not trying to be promoting homosexuality or anything like that," she said in an interview on JoyNews' Foreign Affairs programme that aired on Friday December 10, 2022.

In driving home her point, she stated that the US was not interested in having straight children change their orientation but rather that the government of Ghana protects Ghanaians who identify as Lesbians, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer, LGBTQ.

"We don’t want your straight children to be gay, we want your gay children to be safe and I think it is very important that any sort of threat on one group demonstrates that rights of other people can be encroached upon and discrimination of any kind frankly, is bad,” she stressed.

Meanwhile, the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee through its chairman, Kwame Anyimadu-Antwi, has hinted that it could submit its report on the anti-gay bill currently before Parliament before the House breaks for the Christmas and New Year holidays.

The bill, officially known as 'The Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill' was laid before the House earlier this year and referred to the Committee for among others, public consultation.

It was sponsored by eight MPs, seven from the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and one from the New Patriotic Party (NPP).

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