Bernard Okoe-Boye, the former deputy Minister of Health
Bernard Okoe-Boye, a medical doctor at the Ga East Municipal Hospital has given a medical or health justification in support of the anti-LGBTQ+ bill currently before Parliament.
The former Deputy Minister of Health also disclosed some health-related issues which he asserts are triggered by sexual acts between persons of the same sex.
The former lawmaker for Ledzokuku constituency explained that research indicates that homosexuals are more vulnerable to certain diseases due to the nature of their sexual intercourse.
Okoe-Boye, speaking on the October 14 edition of Metro TV’s Good Morning Ghana show, stated that the first sign of the Human Immune Virus was discovered among homosexuals.
“HIV was discovered among same-sex individuals. The first group that started exhibiting very unusual symptoms that physicians saw was from same-sex partners. It was peculiar amongst them and that’s where the research started.
“One of the things that is also identifiable with such a group is mental and psychological illnesses. If you take 100 heterosexuals and 100 same-sex people, the studies show that, they (same-sex people) have serious psychological issues.
“Anorectal cancers which is a disease that has got to do with the back of a man, it is very high amongst same sex relations and we know why. The more you try to access a place not meant for it, the more you open yourself for disease,” he said on Metro TV.
Bernard Okoe-Boye also gave a hypothesis of how homosexuality is a threat to human existence and could create a procreation crisis in the near future.
“Anytime science proves that there is danger ahead, laws are made to get people out of that danger. What makes a society is a family. Today, people are saying that it’s nothing because we assume 98% of the society is heterosexual so it’s normal. What if in 50 years’ time, the homosexuals become 98% percent and the heterosexuals 2%. It means the human race will go extinct,” he said.
In light of this, Bernard Okoe-Boye wants Parliament to pass the anti-LGBTQ+ bill to guard against these things.
He explained that with the country’s health sector not in the best of conditions, it is important that the state initiates measures against practices that could create crises in the future.
Background Parliament is expected to discuss a Private Member’s Bill submitted by some eight MPs. The 38-page bill before parliament, among other things, stipulates that, people of the same sex who engage in sexual intercourse are “liable on summary conviction, to a fine of not less than seven hundred and fifty penalty units and not more than five thousand penalty units, or to a term of imprisonment of not less than three years and not more than five years or both.”
The Bill targets persons who “hold out as a lesbian, a gay, a transgender, a transsexual, a queer, a pansexual, an ally, a non-binary or any other sexual or gender identity that is contrary to the binary categories of male and female.”
The Bill also targets promoters and advocates of LGBTQ+ rights including, “a person who, by use of media, technological platform, technological account or any other means, produces, procures, markets, broadcasts, disseminates, publishes or distributes a material for purposes of promoting an activity prohibited under the Bill, or a person uses an electronic device, the Internet service, a film, or any other device capable of electronic storage or transmission to produce, procure, market, broadcast, disseminate, publishes or distribute a material for purposes of promoting an activity prohibited under the Bill” as well as a person who “promotes, supports sympathy for or a change of public opinion towards an act prohibited under the Bill.”
As part of its provisions, the Bill outlines that a flouter can be sentenced to a jail term of not less than six years or not more than ten years imprisonment. At the back of the public support the Bill has received, a group of academicians and other professionals have expressed their opposition to the bill.
According to the group of 18, the bill, ‘Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values 2021 Bill’, when passed into law, would erode a raft of fundamental human rights, as enshrined in the 1992 Constitution.