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Even Satan was and still is not gay
Satan or the Devil is no stranger to us and in fact the name Satan or the Devil is synonymous with evil, wicked, dangerous, unholy and what have you.
Right from children to adults, everybody is aware of the existence of Satan or Devil and nobody wants to be associated with that name because it is not something to be proud of.
Bible makes us to understand in Genesis Chapter 3 that Satan approached Eve and chatted with her to convince her to go against the instructions of God. An interesting question arises as to why Satan did not approach Adam but instead approached Eve who by the way was naked, and not Adam who was also naked.
This raises several interesting points for academic discussions and depending on which point of view you take, can be fascinating in the light of current national discussion regarding the phenomenon of homosexuality.
Some people are of the view point that even Satan was not gay since he was attracted by the sheer beauty of Eve hence his desire to go to her first to chat with her in order to convince her to go against God.
Again in Genesis chapter 6:2 the Bible says”…the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and they took them wives of all which they chose.” These were the fallen angels who teamed up with Satan to rebel against God and came down to earth.
When they came down and saw the ladies on earth, they realised what they had been missing in heaven, not to sound blasphemous and were attracted to them and decided to marry them.
Even rebellious angels were not gay and did not consider homosexuality a good thing they should engage in, so why should humans created in the image of God even dream about such an evil, senseless and disgusting act?
This gay and lesbian and the whole LGBTQI phenomenon is something that is so sad and the people who are engaged in it are obviously, mentally very sick.
In one of my articles I made a statement to the effect that if you see a person, taking food from the gutter and eating it with glee, you do not have to possess a degree in psychology to know that there is something very wrong with the mind of that person.
I am yet to see a he goat or a male dog so filled with lust that it goes to have sex with another he goat or male dog. It is common knowledge that gay people wear pampers. Pampers are supposed to be worn by children who are designed to soil themselves during the early stages of their development.
After a few years, they are no longer given pampers to wear because they can attend to call of nature on their own. Why anyone would want to continue in the ridiculous activity of homosexuality still beats my imagination.
It is believed that people engaged in homosexuality pick up this habit at an early age especially in their adolescent years. If this is the case, then our agencies responsible for content of films on TV and various media outlets have to be extra vigilant because, the idea of man and man as well as woman and woman making love is subtly being promoted through cartoons, movies, videos etc.
Everything possible must be done to ensure that young people are not hoodwinked into believing that homosexuality is an acceptable way of life. It never was and never will be because it is an abomination to God and it was for its prevalence in Sodom and Gomorrah that led to their destruction by God according to the Bible.
Some people are trying to justify homosexuality on the basis that some people have a different sexual orientation but nothing like that has been scientifically proven. It cannot, therefore, be said to be a human rights issue as the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights upheld years back.
Just as someone cannot claim that he or she was born a thief and, therefore, must not be found guilty after stealing, same is the case for someone claiming that he was born a homosexual and must be set free when caught engaging in it in Ghana.
Every nation has its culture and that must be respected by our development partners and they must not try to blackmail our leaders into accepting a culture that is alien to the African and the Ghanaian to be specific.
Again everybody knows that when we say marriage, it is the union between a man and a woman and we must not tolerate the adulteration of that word to mean anything different.
The funny thing is that the people who make the argument about human rights are themselves guilty of flouting the human rights of children, by putting in place legislation that allows homosexuals to adopt babies in countries such as France, thereby depriving children the choice of knowing that, it is not normal for two men or two women to become a family and have children in the process.
What must be advocated, is the prevention of hatred towards people suspected to be homosexuals and that people must not take the laws into their own hands in dealing with such people. Just as we do not attack mad people, in the same vein we should not attack people suspected of homosexuality.
They rather deserve our sympathies and ways of offering counseling services must be sought for them instead of attacking them. The nation must put its support behind the coalition against homosexuality in Ghana so that a clear message would be sent to those practising it and those about to engage in it, is to have a change of mind.
We hear of stories of Pastors who have slept with other people’s wives and have been caught and they claim that it was the Devil who tempted them. This is something I do not accept and I believe it is simply a lack of self-discipline.
Since we do not know what happens in the spiritual realm, let us give them the benefit of doubt that Satan, indeed, tempted them.
If that is the case then it means Satan himself has looked at something and has been attracted by it in the woman and has concluded that he can focus the Pastor’s mind on the same thing to cause him to fall into temptation. Conclusion is that even Satan is not gay so why should a human created in the image of God be gay?
Laud Kissi-Mensah
The writer is a social commentator
THE journalist is a hunter. He goes after human rats and grasscutters personified, matters about whom he can salt and spice and present as news. The fatter and juicier the catch, the better, because sensation is essentially our cup of tea.
Our job is to sell news and sell it in grand style.
Because the journalist is a hunter and is created with a special kind of nose for sniffing out news, he is usually not welcome in many places. He is seen as someone who has been born to make people uncomfortable.
The problem is that some people don’t want things written about them even if it is promotional and favourable. When it entails publishing their pictures alongside the story, they are doubly scared.
“Please, don’t use my picture. People will think I’ve got money and come for loan,” someone told me.
Anyhow, journalists are seen as intruders, undesirables, born with plenty of okro in the mouth; maybe some also in the nose. Some of my friends are no longer too close because they fear I’d give them full coverage in the Sikaman Palava column. Ha ha ha! What a funny world!
Well, people like my Uncle, Sir Kofi Jogolo, my former classmate and born-mathematician, Kwame Korkorti, and ex-football star cum human-salamander Kofi Kokotako don’t mind featuring in the hilarious inches of this column. Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty is one personality who has to be mentioned in this palaver.
These are people who are going to live long, primarily because they see the world as one big ball of fun. When Kwame Korkorti was told that his dear mother was dead at home, he smiled and asked the bearer of the message whether his mother had cooked the afternoon meal before claiming she was dead. Until her death, Korkorti ate his lunch at his mother’s end.
When my Uncle Kofi Jogolo was picked and lost 1,500 dollars and a good amount of Sikaman currency, he didn’t lament the loss. Instead he was amused. In fact, he was almost glad about it, because he grinned from ear to ear, stroked his delicate moustache and congratulated the thief, adding that “He is smarter than I am.” Yeah, Jogolo is the man who employs a Swedish barber to trim his moustache.
And when Kofi Kokotako was unemployed and was nearly hit by an articulated truck, he called the driver a fool. “The idiot should have killed me,” he said to me. “Didn’t he know I was unemployed and suffering?”
Today, Kokotako is employed as a Reverend and is not doing badly at all. Thanks to the regular silver collection.
And what about Kofi Owuo, the celebrated poor man. His wife left him not because he was poor, but because he swore in front of her that he would never prosper.
The following dawn the wife packed bag and baggage and went back to her parents and told them all about her husband’s alliance with poverty. Her parents were bewildered and called the alliance unholy. They had no option than to send back Owuo’s drinks to end the marriage.
Kofi Owuo alias Death By Poverty did not contest the issue. He was more engrossed thinking about how to become poorer than to contest what he called a frivolous matter. The wife could go to hell, he said. These are people longevity smiles upon. Nothing worries them.
Getting back to talking about journalists. I’d say that anywhere there is journalism, the issue of press freedom is not too far away. Is the press free? That’s one question foreigners want answer to when they are on visit.
Well, journalists celebrate a yearly WORLD PRESS FREEDOM DAY to drum home the idea of press freedom as a very important thing in the practice of journalism.
This year’s was celebrated almost a fortnight ago but people didn’t see much of us because we are normally not good celebrants. We should have mounted a float to roam the entire capital, dancing asaboni to brass band music just like PTC did recently.
Although journalists are known to be very good dancers because they walk very much, on that day, they were all busy writing. It was the Minister of Information, Mr Kofi Totobi Quakyi who saved the day by addressing a forum organised to mark the day.
He is a man I’ve always admired since his radical university days. He spoke much on press freedom, cautioning the press not to abuse the freedom granted by the Fourth Republican constitution, but to use it for the progress of society.
Well, press freedom has been defined by many journalists as the freedom to ‘write nonsense’. This definition is not quite accurate. I asked one staff reporter to define press freedom. It took him fifteen minutes to put up something.
“Press freedom is the freedom that is enjoyed by the press that enables journalists to publish or broadcast any kind of material so long as it is absolutely true, is not libelous and slanderous, and is not against the national interest.”
I gave him eight out of 10, a straight A. I guess every journalist is old enough to know that certain things he or she writes is for or against the national interest. We certainly must guard against writing against the national interest; that is very important.
There is also the question of criticising government. The government can be criticized, so long as the criticisms are genuine and the President and his ministers are not insulted and called names. Let us criticize, but let us do it decently so that the journalistic profession can be revered, and its nobility acknowledged. We are not war mongers, are we?
One area in which journalists are not spoken well of is the complaint that they misquote people. Journalists sometimes misquote people, but in four out of five complaints it turns out that nobody is misquoted after all.
When we interview people they say things unreservedly and we publish unreservedly. When the publication is out and their friends or superiors read it and accuse them of having said too much to the press, then they start claiming they were misquoted.
We have encountered these ‘misquotation palaver’ every now and then and reporters are usually accused of this transgression. However, when they bring out their note-books or recorders, it is realised that they wrote nothing out of the way. “Book no lie”.
My advice to people who deal with the press is that if they do not want anything written, they shouldn’t say it. What they want to say is OFF-RECORD, then of course, there is no reason to say it. When you say it, you’re taking a risk. In that instance, you can’t also claim to have been misquoted or words put into your mouth.
And it isn’t every journalist who would be circumspect in matters that are supposed to be off-record, because journalists often want to be as sensational as possible to make their stories saleable. So say just what you want to see published and you won’t later regret it and claim you were misquoted.
Well, I’m not holding brief for journalists, because a few of us are notorious for colouring our reports sometimes sand-papering the words so much that they look very bright in front of readers.
As I once said, when the police tells one such notorious pressman that the thief stole a brown goat, the pressman would want to know whether the goat was bearded. Of course, the police would say ‘Yes’.
However, in the press report, it appears, “A gang of notorious goat-thieves were apprehended in the early hours of yesterday. In the car in which they were riding was a brownish-red goat having a long beard. Upon further examination, it was realised that the goat also had a greyish moustache.”
When the story appears, the police are naturally disturbed. A single thief turns out to be a gang of thieves. The goat also becomes a chameleon and changes colour to brownish-red. And a moustacheless goat overnight wears a greyish moustache whether you like it or not. Luckily the journalist does not add that the moustache was trimmed by a Swedish barber.
Yes, we have a few of such mischief-creating, chronically notorious journalists. But they are one in a hundred. In any case, we make the world. And we shall always do our best to make it a happy place to live in.
This article was first publish on Saturday, May, 20, 1995
When I hear of people who are of the opinion that they cannot make it in life unless they travel abroad, l become sad.
Whenever I see on TV, news of people, that is migrants who have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea, while attempting to cross to Europe, l become filled with sadness and then anger.
The underlying factor is desperation born out of loss of hope, in life. When an individual tends to believe that his only hope of making it in life is to travel abroad, the risk of dying at sea, does not deter him or her.
The role of some pastors on shaping the mindset of people, especially the youth, leaves much to be desired. You hear them declaring on various media platforms how they can pray for you to get a visa to travel abroad, instead of encouraging them to find something to do to improve their lives as the Bible teaches that God will bless the work of their hands.
The GREATER WORKS CONFERENCE is geared towards renewing the minds of people with a specific focus on people of African descent to rid themselves of the negative perception of lack of capacity to excel in life.
Pastor Mensa Otabil believes that every human being, no matter the skin colour, was created in the exact image of God and therefore has the capacity to do exploits.
The whiteman was not created in the image of God while the Blackman was created in the image of something other than God. The Black person therefore can achieve whatever the whiteman can achieve.
The development in terms of industrialisation that is lacking which has generated unemployment for the youth, is due to lack of effective leadership. The lack of moral integrity in society, is what is causing the lack of job opportunities, which is as a result of corrupt acts which drive away private investment.
A culture of inferiority complex exists which needs to be dealt with, so the African can develop the self worth necessary for personal development which can then result in capacity deployment to avhieve personal goals.
Success in life begins with the individual’s recognition that he or she is capable of achieving the dreams he or she has conceived in his or her mind. The Bible teaches that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the holy is understanding according to Proverbs 9:10.
Christianity was the driving force behind the development of Europe because no society can sustain development without high moral values. GREATER WORKS therefore is a deliberate project to shape the minds of people, especially the youth, who will become the leaders of our future, to prioritise morality in their daily lives.
This is the only way to see a massive transformation in every aspect of our lives as Ghanaians and Africans in Ghana and the rest of the continent.
Since the inception of the GREATOR WORKS CONFERENCE, it has made a lot of impact in the lives of many people from the youth up to the senior citizens level. I recall the testimony of a church member who was motivated and pursued higher education and became one of the youngest Chartered Accountants in this country. Year after year, the impact of the conference has been enormous and lives in Ghana and across the continent, are being transformed.
Black people have started regaining their self confidence and the youth have started getting into areas that previously were considered out of bounds. At a personal level, certain ideas that some years ago, l would have not dreamt about suddenly has become realistic dreams.
The Christian lifestyle has impacted on my children and those close to me. Mindset change starts with one individual, then another and then gradually it spreads like a viral infection until a critical mass is attained and them a massive impact. There is hope for the future.
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
