Brigitte Dzogbenuku, 2020 Presidential candidate for the Progressive People’s Party
The Presidential Candidate of the Progressive People’s Party (PPP) in the 2020 general elections, Brigitte Dzogbenuku, has opined that the country is tackling the issue of LGBTQ+ the wrong way.
She says as a country, we are “attacking the symptoms of the issue rather than the cause of the issue.”
Explaining her point further, she posited that the LGBTQ+ phenomenon exists because everybody on earth is looking for love. However, in this case, some may opine that the LGBTQ+ persons are finding love at the wrong places.
“You and I, and everybody on this earth is looking for love. I take it from my Christian perspective. In Christianity, the first law is to love the Lord your God with all your heart and all strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. LGBTQ persons are all human beings. They all want a love like you and I,” she told Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show.
Highlighting the cause that the country needs to focus on, she explained that many of these persons who are involved in LGBTQ+ do so because they might have been abused, molested or abandoned. “You can’t blame them, it is what happened to them and that is why they are going the way they are going,” she added.
Brigitte stated that the anti-LGBTQ bill is only going to advocate a lot of hate against these people. While she was neither in support of the criminalization or legalization of LGBTQ+, the leader has called on lawmakers to review the bill to ensure that it protects all persons involved.
Meanwhile, Brigitte has categorically stated that the views she has presented on LGBTQ+ do not reflect that of her party, the PPP.
The debate on LGTBQ+ in the country was sparked by the introduction of a new anti-gay bill into parliament that seeks to criminalize LGBTQ+ and its related activities while promoting conversion therapy programs seeking to “convert” people from homosexuality to heterosexuality.
Some academics, lawyers and civil society professionals have vehemently opposed this bill, contending that the bill is an “impermissible invasion of the inviolability of human dignity.”
The Christian community in Ghana has, however, embraced the bill.