Ghanaian legislators introduced a bill again this month to increase criminal penalties for homosexuality and supporting LGBTQ+ rights.

The Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, if passed, would punish same-sex acts with a term of up to three years for same-sex relations and five years for “willful promotion, sponsorship or support of LGBTQ+ activities.”

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How Ghana’s LGBTQ+ community is fighting the country’s deadly “Family Values” bill
Some refuse to go into hiding where others have found strength and support in underground places.

A similar bill was introduced in the West African nation in 2021. Two preemptive cases were filed against the bill, but Ghana’s supreme court dismissed them both unanimously because the president had yet to approve the bills.

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The bill was declared dead earlier this year after Ghana’s new president, John Mahama, took office. But Mahama sounded supportive of the bill.

“I don’t know what the promoters of the bill intend to do, but I think we should have a conversation about it again,” he told a delegation of Catholic bishops in January.

“If we are teaching our values in schools, we wouldn’t need to pass a bill to enforce family values. More than just passing the Family Values Bill, we need to agree on a curriculum that instills these values in our children as they grow,” he added.

His comments, though, represented a step forward for some LGBTQ+ advocates in Ghana.

“For many, the mere suggestion that LGBT+ issues could be addressed through education rather than criminalization represents a significant departure from the traditional legislative path championed by the bill’s proponents,” said Berinyuy Burinyuy of LGBT Rights Ghana at the time.

But Mahama has since said that he is committed to passing the anti-homosexuality bill.

The bill comes as many LGBTQ+ people fear for their safety in Ghana.

“I grew up just trying to understand what I am,” LGBT Rights Ghana deputy director Abdul-Wadud Mohammed told DW. “Everybody who knew me knew that I was gay, and that has been my life.”

Mohammed, who grew up in Ghana, left because he felt threatened.

An unnamed bisexual man who fled the country due to safety concerns told DW that he “personally witnessed someone being killed for being gay.”

Still, anti-LGBTQ+ attitudes appear to be on the rise, with government officials calling homosexuality an import from the West.

“We will never accept it no matter the consequences,” then-presidential candidate Mahamudu Bawumia said last year. “We will defend our values. And we will let the world know, we will not change our values for them.”

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has called the legislation “a cruel bill that violates the fundamental rights of LGBTQI+ people and allies throughout Ghana.”

“Every single lawmaker who voted to pass this bill is wrongly using their power to strip away the basic humanity of the people they are supposed to represent,” said David Stacy, HRC’s vice president of government affairs, following passage of the bill in Parliament earlier this year.

Ghana joins a growing list of African nations outlawing LGBTQ+ identity.

Uganda’s notorious Kill the Gays law, signed in 2023, is the most egregious example, with penalties up to and including death for some same-sex behavior.

More recently, the military junta ruling Burkina Faso, Ghana’s neighbor to the north, said that homosexual acts are now an offense punishable by law.

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