Director of Advocacy and Policy Engagement at CDD-Ghana, Dr. Kojo Pumpuni Asante has expressed his disapproval for the LGBTQ+ bill currently before Parliament.

According to him, the bill is not only problematic, but has a lot of inconsistencies, and rides on a lot of emotions.

“For me, this whole bill is a non-starter. It has been a non-starter for some of us right from the beginning because even the way the problem, the public policy challenge is presented in the memoranda is inconsistent, it is confusing, it rides on emotions,” he stressed on The Probe on Sunday, June 9.

He further added that “for a bill that basically seeks to imprison people for their sexual preferences and so on, for us not being able to be discipline in addressing or even framing what the problem is, is a big issue.

“And right from that start, it then accelerated into all manner of violations of the constitution because the proponents of the bill are so committed to it in a way."

Dr Asante further pointed out that since the content of the bill is such that anyone who speaks about LGBT or advocates for it must be imprisoned, it could lay up trouble for Parliament.

He explained that parliament might not be able to suggest making amends once it becomes a law because the bill has injuncted parliament from trying to change it later in the future.

Additionally, he contended that LGBT is not a novelty in Ghana, therefore if it is now considered an issue, then parliament is addressing it in the wrong way

According to him, the eagerness of Parliament to pass the bill into law is based on fear-mongering that if a stop is not put to it, all Ghanaians and the future generation to come will become queer.

This, he stressed, will not resolve the issue.

Again, he expressed his disappointment with the proceedings of the second reading of the LGBTQ+ bill in parliament on Wednesday, July 5.

Dr. Asante stated that the way that parliament went about the second proceeding of the bill was as though if any legislator dared to say he or she was not in favour of the bill, then they were going to have the public against them.