Features
Of sexuality, same-sex couples — a student’s perspective
The argument on the LGBTQI rights has witnessed two opposing sides: those in favour and those against its endorsement. What informs each argument?
Unlike the Western world, whose stand on gay rights is informed directly by their values — a mostly atheistic society that believes there is no God, and, therefore, humans, being masters of themselves, must be allowed to live, act and do things as they feel – the Ghanaian community, on the other hand, is mostly theistic society.
Our society has a culture that’s largely informed by its belief in the existence of God. However, there is a minority in the Ghanaian society that has registered their support for gay rights. What informs their support for gay rights? With the exception of those who argue from a legal perspective, it has been a matter of logic and empathy!
I have followed the arguments closely and one line of argument is common with supporters of gay rights: the idea that gay people are humans and must be allowed to exercise their sexual preference. There are those who also do not see the differences in what gay people are seeking to do and what their critics are already doing.
For example, how is it that people who are living in sexual sin – fornication and adultery have openly castigated homosexuals for their sexual preferences? It may interest you to know that supporters of gay rights have interpreted this as hypocritical – that this group of people also lives in sin yet they point fingers at them.
But the truth is that what they are seeking to pursue is not only sinful, but defies our very identity as image-bearers of God, so that a person who did not create himself believes he has the right to assume an identity that he desires.
Having said that, homosexuals lament the fact that they were born with such feelings and since they did not decide to feel the way they do, why then can they not be allowed to indulge their feelings.
This is perhaps the part that gets many to empathise with them. This brings me to a more crucial concern: If at all we have taken time to listen to homosexuals, how have we responded? For a person who believes he was created in a certain way and with certain feelings he did not particularly choose, is it enough to tell him it is not right to express his feelings?
Maybe
Perhaps, the manner in which the anti-gay community has registered their stand against the movement is what makes it look more like an act of hate rather than a condemnation.
I wish to share two practical events I witnessed a couple of weeks ago: I listened to a religious leader on television who was asked to share his opinion on the subject of LGBTQI rights in Ghana.
Clearly, given his religious values it was not surprising that he took a stand against it. But I was surprised and disappointed at the tone with which he registered his displeasure. While he quoted some good texts that obviously vilified the act, his tone and choice of words were rather not “scriptural”.
I believe that the way in which a message is delivered is as important as the message itself. When Christ talked about rebuking a brother when he was wrong, He stated that we should do that in love because He knows admonishing the person is not the goal. The goal is to cause a change or redirect the person’s path and it is only love that has the power to do that.
This is precisely my perspective: I believe we need to rethink the manner and tone with which we address this issue. If we are against it because God is, then we must do it God’s way. The way to change a person’s heart has always been through love and that is God’s way.
Finding God does not mean the feelings towards same-sex or any type of sin would not haunt you. It definitely will. But what becomes different is that this time, you recognise that God is greater than your feelings and you trust Him to help you overcome sin.
Indeed, we are in an era where the world believes everything can be redefined; A world that believes there are no “absolutes”; A world that has learned to justify everything; a world that believes there is no such thing as “evil”.
This, however, is not the case. Ghana is a secular country made up of Christians, Muslims and traditional believers. None of these sects accept lesbianism and gayism. And as a President, once the people you rule abhor these things, equally you cannot accept these cultures on the grounds of human rights. I think that the President should be a strong leader with character and readiness to protect and defend the sanctity of his country. Irrespective of our challenges, our nation remains paramount against any other foreign aim.
Ghanaians must rise up to resist this with all our might. It is time yet again, to see our Civil Society groups, Pastors, Imams, etc to take their microphones to speak against this naturally and logically wicked agenda.
Even in the animal kingdom opposite sex feeling is what is embraced.
The author, is a student of the Ghana Institute of Journalism
Writer’s email: hakimrichard56@gmail.com
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
Join our WhatsApp Channel now!
https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VbBElzjInlqHhl1aTU27
