The Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference has called on president John Dramani Mahama to reintroduce the bill on Human Sexual Rights and Family Values, commonly known as the anti-LGBT bill and sign it into law.
During a courtesy call on the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference yesterday 14, January, 2025, Most Reverend Matthew Gyamfi, President of the Ghana Catholic Bishops Conference urged the Mahama led government not to delay in passing the bill.
In response, Mahama said, “I think it should not be a Private Member’s Bill, but a government-sponsored one.
“If we were teaching our values in schools, we wouldn’t need to pass a bill to enforce our family values, and that is why I think more than even the family values bill, is us agreeing on a curriculum that inculcates these values into our children as they are growing up, so that we don’t need to legislate it”.
President Mahama expressed his commitment to the bill, called for broader consultations and renewed discussions among stakeholders as a government-sponsored initiative would allow the country’s cultural values to be integrated into the school curriculum.
He added that this move will eliminate the need for a separate bill aimed at enforcing family values to be legislated.
“I don’t know what the promoters of the bill intend to do, but I think we should have a conversation on it again so that all of us, if we decide to move on the way forward, we move forward with a consensus,” he noted.
Most Reverend Matthew Gyamfi, reiterated that “What we want is that it is made into a law. That does not mean that it cannot be taught in the schools if it is made into a law. Many of our laws are taught in schools through civic education and other things”.
“So the fact that it should be taught does not rule out the fact that it should be made into a law. Ghanaians are overwhelmingly in favour of it so we don’t want the use of any technical words to demean what Ghanaians want.”