Everybody Has a Choice but Every Choice Has Limitations - NPP MP Replies LGBTQ+ Community

Member of Parliament(MP) for Afigya Kwabre North, Collins Adomako-Mensah has slammed the critics of the anti-gay bill who claim practicing homosexuality is a choice and human right of the actors.

Ghana has passed the anti-gay bill but it awaits presidential assent to become law.

President Nana Akufo-Addo has about 14 days to either assent to the bill or return it to Parliament to either quash or revise it.

The bill prohibits the promotion, advocacy and every act of homosexuality in the country.

Offenders will be sentenced to a minimum of six months to five years in prison.

But the bill has been met with fierce opposition from some section of the Ghanaian citizenry and the international community.

The United States has threatened to pull back their assistance to Ghana if the bill becomes law.

Their ambassador to Ghana has also cautioned the President of the Republic, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, not to assent to the bill saying “I am saddened because some of the smartest, most creative, most decent people I know are LGBT”.

“The bill Parliament passed takes away not only their basic human rights but those of all Ghanaians because it undermines their constitutional rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of the press. It will be bad for public order and public health. If enacted, it will also hurt Ghana’s international reputation and Ghana’s economy," she wrote on the embassy’s X (formerly twitter).

To Collins Adomako-Mensah, homosexuality may be a choice but every choice has limitation.

He noted his issue has to do with the homosexuals trying to impose their activities on Ghana to the extent that they could boldly open an office in the nation.

In his view, the nation cannot tolerate such blatant public display of homosexuality.

"Everybody has a choice but you should know your choice has some limitations. You can't say you have a choice, so you can do anything any time anyhow; you can't do that. You live in a society. When you were born, you know the kind of values that have been imbued in us as a country. We came to meet Ghana and so we should know what has brought us this far. You can't just come on the basis that you have a choice."

"If that is so, then it's a choice to steal. Everybody has a choice. I can go to steal because my choice is to steal...but you must know that your choice has a limitation. You cannot say you have the right or choice to steal, so I want to go and steal. This is why we have laws, values and previous practice to guide your choice. Nobody says you don't have a choice but that choice must be guided in the context of where you live, where you come from, how you've been brought up; that choice must be situated within that context," he said on Peace FM's "Kokrokoo" show Monday morning.