My children must be straight – Stonebwoy on LGBT

Multiple-award winning Afropop, dancehall and reggae musician, Livingstone Etse Satekla, better known by his stage name Stonebwoy, says he will not countenance his children being a gay or lesbian.

According to the BET award winner who confidently stated that he’s straight, he expects his children to take after him and his wife due to the sort of upbringing they are giving them.

“I believe that people will take after you most often. I am straight, my dad was straight, my mother was straight. My family line majority of them showed straightness as far as I am concerned. So I believe that, I am straight and I can put my hands on that. My wife is straight. My daughter has got to be straight, my son has got to be straight because they are continuing in that certain. So they are going to learn that,” Stonebwoy said in an interview with Bola Ray on Starr Chat on Starr FM.

In mid-June 2021, Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana Alban Bagbin stated that LGBT+ rights “should not be encouraged or accepted by our society” and that “urgent actions are being taken to pass a law to eventually nip the activities of [LGBT+] groups in the bud.”

Later that month, eight MPs in the Parliament proposed the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021. The eight MPs were Sam Nartey George, Della Sowah, Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah, Alhassan Suhuyini, Rita Naa Odoley Sowah, Helen Ntoso, and Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, all of the National Democratic Congress, as well as John Ntim Fordjour of the New Patriotic Party. On 1 July, Alban Bagbin stated that he expected the law to be passed within six months, telling a prayer meeting of Ghanaian MPs that “the LGBT+ pandemic is worse than COVID-19.”

On 2 August 2021, the bill passed its first reading in the Ghanaian Parliament, being referred to the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs.

On 13 October 2021, majority leader in the Parliament Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu said that the Parliament would ensure “careful balance” in assessing the bill.

On 5 November 2021, deputy majority leader Alexander Kwamina Afenyo-Markin announced that Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee would begin hearing petitions in a week, estimating that “we are looking at 15 weeks for the hearings to be done.”

On 12 November 2021, public hearings began on the bill in the Parliament of Ghana. On the first day of hearings, Henry Kwasi Prempeh of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development spoke against the bill, saying that “merely because you see yourself as part of a momentary majority, does not entitle you to impose your will on even one individual in the society.” Kyeremeh Atuahene of the Ghana AIDS Commission said that the bill risked criminalising anti-HIV/AIDS efforts in the country, and also pushing back against donor funding.

On 30 November 2021, Akwasi Osei of the Mental Health Authority Ghana spoke in support of the bill, saying that homosexuality was abnormal and that a majority of LGBT+ people in Ghana claimed to be queer because of peer pressure. That day, Commissioner of Human Rights and Administrative Justice of Ghana Joseph Whittal told the Parliament to “be careful on the bill.” saying that Commission was neither for nor against the bill but that the bill risked putting advocates for human rights in danger of criminal prosecution.

On 6 December 2021, Moses Foh-Amoaning of the National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values spoke in support of the bill, saying LGBT+ people were “not well, and the law gives [health authorities] the power to restrain such people.”

On 5 July 2023, the Parliament of Ghana unanimously voted to grant the Bill a second reading, and agreed to minor amendments proposed by the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee.