The Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference (GCBC) has expressed its total opposition to the increasing activities of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex (LGBTQI) in the country.
It condemned all those who support the practice of homosexuality in Ghana.
According to the Catholic Bishops, they are compelled to state their position because the Roman Catholic Church is opposed to this abominable practice, which appears to be receiving support in the country lately from certain quarters.
In a statement signed by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Tamale and President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference, Most Rev. Philip Naameh, the Bishops called on President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo to state unambiguously, his and the government’s position on the matter of homosexuality and its practice in the country.
The conference also called on the government to close down an LGBTQI office that was recently commissioned in Accra.
“We also urge the executive and the legislature never to be cowed down or to succumb to the pressure to legalize the rights of LGBTQIs in Ghana,” the statement said.
Quoting extensively from the Bible, the Catholic Bishops indicated that homosexuality is a perversion and a pagan abomination as captured in Lev 18:22 that reads; “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination”
Similarly, in Lev 20:13 it is stated that, “If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.”
“Another passage dealing with homosexuality is Gen 19:1-28. According to this passage, all the men in the sinful city of Sodom are depicted as threatening homosexual rape on the two male visitors given hospitality by Lot (Gen 19). These men were punished with death for their desire to commit this abomination,” part of the statement said.
According to Conference, the clearest among the many references to homosexuality captured in the letters of St. Paul in the New Testament is Rom 1:26-27 in which Paul argues that pagans, even without the biblical revelation ought to have honoured the true God but they turned instead to idolatry.
“As a consequence of this primary disorder, God gave them over to sexual disorder and dishonourable passions as well, both women and men exchanging natural relations for unnatural ones.”
“Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error” (Rom 1:26).”
The Catholic Church, the Conference said, sees the practice of homosexuality as something condemned by the Scriptures and that its practice is incompatible with the creation stories relating to man and woman in the book of Genesis.
It, however, noted that the Church makes a distinction between the homosexual condition or tendency and individual homosexual actions.
The latter, the Conference said, is intrinsically disordered and is in no case to be approved of and that while the Church does not condemn people for being homosexuals or for having the homosexual tendency, it condemns the homosexual acts that homosexuals perform.
