Updated Wednesday
There are disturbing reports of Christian, and in particular of Anglican, support for attacks on homosexual people in Ghana.
Independent Alex Duval Smith Ghana official calls for effort to ‘round up’ suspected gays
In a new burst of African homophobia, a government minister in Ghana has drawn support after calling on the country’s intelligence services to track down and arrest all gays and lesbians.
The call from Paul Evans Aidoo, the minister for the Western Region of Ghana, marks the latest in a series of expressions of officially condoned homophobia across the continent, which has previously been seen in Malawi, Uganda and South Africa…
BBC Paul Evans Aidoo’s Ghana gay spy call ‘promotes hatred’
A Ghanaian minister is “promoting hatred” by urging people to report those they suspect to be homosexual, a human rights group has told the BBC…
Africa Review Homosexuality: Ghana churches caution politicians
Ghanaian politicians who may want to push the idea of human rights to include open support for homosexuals will think twice after the Christian Council of Ghana (CCG) took a strong stand on the issue.
The latter have and called on the faithful to “vote out lawmakers who show support for homosexuals”.
The CCG’s position stems from fears that international human rights groups want to lobby Parliament to pass a law that would legalise homosexuality in the country.
And:
The Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Church in Ghana, the Right Rev. Mathias Medadues-Badohu, says the Church in Ghana would intensify its teaching on the ills of homosexuality and would use its clinics to help those who want to get “out of it”.
ghana mma Christian Leaders Warn Politicians Over Gays
…Rt. Rev. Matthias Modedues-Badohu, Presiding Bishop of the Anglican Church and Bishop of Ho, said, “We speak against acts that go against the word of God. It is abnormal and not good. Our objective is to condemn it so that people will not get involved.”
The Anglican Communion Office recently held a Continuing Indaba Hub Meeting in Ghana, see this ACNS report, “The Anglican Communion is one family” Ghanaian bishop tells theologians.
Updates
Warren Throckmorton has written about this at Religion Dispatches Ghana’s Government Silent on Investigation of Gays.
…Some observers believe the number of sexual minorities may have been inflated in order to whip up opposition to homosexuality which could advance the standing of conservative politicians. Graham Knight, a British blogger living in Ghana, recently wrote that the claim of 8,000 sexual minorities has little support in fact. Knight concluded, in a blog post titled Did Ghana register 8000 homosexuals? The facts behind the hype that:
the real story is of a rather low-key workshop that has been sensationalized by the press, possibly with the collusion of a local doctor. The press reports are designed to create fear as are the unrepresentative group of Muslims claiming an imminent Sodom and Gomorrah for Africa.
While the accuracy of the original story is open to question, only a spark is needed to get a fire going—intentionally or not. And given the rhetoric in Ghana, it is difficult to avoid comparison to Uganda’s recent history in relation to sexual minorities. In March, 2009, three Americans spoke at a conference on homosexuality and used false and misleading information to inflame public sentiment against gays. Later that year, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was tabled…
I trust drawing attention to the connection to the Anglican Communion will prompt Rowan to say something. I’ve given up hoping he will have a change of heart and realize that his own role in the spread of homophobia in the communion, and the ramifications for the safety and freedoms of gays and lesbians.
Truly the ‘Dark Continent’.
No wonder the ABC has a problem with keeping the Anglican Communion together. Surely Ghana, like the other GAFCON community Churches must be offered the facilities of teaching about the intrinsic nature of homosexuality as a natural constituent in the variety of the human sexual response.
“For your sake we are being massacred all day long, treated as sheep to be slaughtered” – Romans 8 v.36
From Norway to Ghana, Roman Catholic and Anglican leaders must learn from the former to prevent the latter by standing up to would-be murderers. We can only watch and wait for public statements (or lack of) in the forthcoming days.
Sub Saharan Africa, the laboratory for the Western Right Wing’s experiments in social engineering.
As it is in Africa, so they wish to create in the West.
Remember too that Ghana is emphatically NOT right-wing evangelical. It is much more right-wing ordinariate territory – I remember Bp Matthias collecting old English Missals to take back there.
This underlines the fact that we are dealing with conservatives of all hues in the church as well as the political fascists who are providing the funds, and, too often, the bullets. I wonder what anti-gay motives will be unearthed in the subtext of the Norwegian bomber’s apologia for his actions.
The thing that bother me the most about the homophobia and hatred displayed by Church leaders in Africa, is the amount of “accommodation” that Rowan Williams has provided them in order to keep them in the “Anglican Communion.” This is very disturbing.
The Anglican Church in Ghana was an Anglo Catholic missionary effort. How ironic.
“The thing that bother me the most about the homophobia and hatred displayed by Church leaders in Africa, is the amount of “accommodation” that Rowan Williams has provided them in order to keep them in the “Anglican Communion.” This is very disturbing.”
How long, one wonders, will he be silent on this newest breakout of un-Christian hysteria? “To be silent is to consent.”
The phrase ‘Dark Continent’ is indicative of the ignorance of European map-makers regarding Africa’s internal geography.
How unfortunate that a number of comments on this thread maintain the same level of ignorance regarding the African religious landscape by painting the entire continent with such a broad brush of simplistic moral contempt.
Sub-Saharan Africa includes South Africa.
There is a Canon of the Ghanaian Diocese of Koforidua serving as rector of a church in the Diocese of New York http://www.resurrectionnyc.org/clergy.html
Where does that diocese stand regarding this issue?
Thank you David. I am quite aware of the origins of the phrase ‘Dark Continent’. I try to be careful in my language, particularly in using words like ‘discovered’ which reflect a Eurocentric view of the world. Unfortunately there are so many continuing reports of active homophobia in many African countries, usually led or endorsed by the Christian churches that I do think that it is permissble to use the phrase in the sense in which I meant it. Many of us here are well aware that South Africa is potentially different with its progressive constitution but even there ‘corrective… Read more »
Richard Ashby
Unsurprisingly, attitudes towards sexuality in Africa as well as Asia and Latin America have to some extent been influenced by the values brought by European and North American missionaries and colonisers, which many in the West have come to question.
There is also, I believe, amidst the uncertainties of today’s world, a trend towards scapegoating, where people project their negative feelings on to a vulnerable minority. In parts of Euroep this may be immigrants or people of other beliefs, elsewhere this may be gays, but either way can cause havoc.
Joseph Conrad wrote a book about a trip up the Congo called ‘The Heart of Darkness’; pretty unreadable if I remember. I agree with Savi that western ‘civilisation’ has left a terrible legacy, and not just in Africa, something being exploited in the the exported America’s cultural wars. (A contrafactual history Africa without European intrusion would be interesting.) Distracting the population from the corruption and failures of government by scapegoating is a time honoured practice which goes way back beyond Africa and homosexuality, through the Jews, Muslims, freemasons communists, trade unionists, khulaks etc., etc…
“Truly the ‘Dark Continent'” – Richard Ashby
i.e. Europe. From Russia with Love:
Police brutality, arrests of peaceful campaigners, those regarded as mad, bad or cryptoterrorists…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/sacked-journalist-puts-spotlight-on-russias-gay-pride-march-ban-2325953.html