General secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana, Rev. Dr. Kwabena Opuni-Frimpong says the fact that something is legally right does not make it culturally so.
He was speaking on the back of the President’s response to a question on the legality of homosexuality in an interview with Aljazeera.
“At the moment, I don’t feel and I don’t see that in Ghana, there is that strong current of opinion that will say: ‘This is something that we need even deal with’. It’s not, so far, a matter which is on the agenda,” the President said in response to why Ghana’s laws still criminalise homosexuality and what will provoke its legalization.
A lot of concerns have been raised as to what the constitution states about Homosexuality in Ghana, with the general public expressing their opinions.
Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko, Lawyer and former Executive Director of Danquah Institute, took to Facebook to defend the President saying he is legally right as homosexuality is NOT a crime in Ghana.
Mr Otchere-Darko said, “The President was also right to say that our society doesn’t seem yet ready for legalizing gay marriages. What we must all protect against is the culture of hate against any man or woman for their sexual orientation. You do not have to be pro-gay to respect your neighbour’s right to choose the one he or she wants to love”.
The General Secretary of the Christian Council of Ghana in an interview with GhanaWeb, however said the practice can be legally right but culturally and morally wrong.
‘’You can be legally right but culturally wrong, that is it. So yes, maybe if somebody puts pressure on you, you may want to change your law, but whether changing your law makes anything right, we will still want to get some understanding about if somebody is able to mobilize pressure on us something is bound to happen, we still want to understand,’’ he said.
He noted that it is a norm in our culture for certain things to change but there are certain fundamentals such as family life and marriage that define us as a people and changing them will cease to make us Ghanaians.