By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The question of the fundamental right of non-heterosexual people to a life of dignity and respect, with the rest of their non-homosexual fellow humans, continues to excite gratuitous and irrational passions among conservative Ghanaian politicians. The latest subject of such irrational conniption is the outspoken and maverick New Patriotic Party (NPP) Member of Parliament for Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa in the Central Region of Ghana. And the latest target of the fury of Mr. P. C. Appiah-Ofori is President Barack Obama (See “Obama Can Go to ‘Hell’ With Gay Threat – PC Appiah Ofori” Ghanaweb.com 12/7/11).

And here must also be recalled the fact that the first African-American president of the United States, who also pioneered the liberal practice of allowing homosexual and transgender American citizens and residents to freely serve in the U.S. military without having to worry about being exposed and dishonorably discharged for who they are, recently announced that countries that proscribed the fundamental human rights of same-sex and transgender oriented people risked having U.S. foreign economic assistance to them either drastically reduced or denied them altogether.

We must also quickly point out that President Obama is not the first leader among the proverbial group of the eight most industrially advanced nations of the world to issue this same statement. Several weeks ago, for instance, Great Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron issued a similar warning and was met with a riotously angry backlash in many Third-World countries, including Ghana and Nigeria. In the latter most populous African country, parliamentarians and senators responded sharply by passing a law summarily proscribing homosexual existence and culture. And while Ghanaian leaders and politicians have been equally vocal on the same question, parliament has yet to follow the Nigerian example. Many observers, however, believe that Ghana is highly unlikely to make any vehement legal issue out of this purely moral and subjective matter.

Still, what makes Mr. Appiah-Ofori’s salvo against the American president rather curiously interesting is the fact that the hip-shooting and lone-ranging MP has decided to interpret Mr. Obama’s warning in terms of a “threat.” And on the latter score, Mr. Appiah-Ofori is only one among a legion. In other words, cursory and unscientific, albeit quite credible, surveys indicate that a presumable majority of his countrymen and women think exactly like the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa Member of Ghana’s National Assembly. And this is why it is imperative for those of us in the media, especially those of us avid students and observers of international politics, to explain the difference between a “warning” and a “threat” to the addled and largely misguided likes of Mr. Appiah-Ofori. In essence, it risibly amounts to an imperious expression of entitlement for the likes of Mr. Appiah-Ofori to presume that, somehow, Messrs. Obama and Cameron have absolutely no right to determine who receives material assistance from the United States and Britain, respectively.

In other words, were either Mr. Obama or Mr. Cameron interested in threatening the survival or existence of any country ill-disposed towards the fundamental human rights of gays and lesbians, these leaders would have been talking more about the imposition of sanctions and the need to garrisoning NATO troops, or some such military personnel, in selected countries under the guise of the imperative need to protecting the human rights of an endangered gay and lesbian population, just as the global community analogically witnessed in the case of Libya and the erstwhile Gaddhafy dictatorship in the wake of the putative Arab Spring. Which, of course, is not to suggest that leaders and parliamentarians like Mr. Appiah-Ofori have absolutely no right, whatsoever, to vehemently protest relevant foreign policies of the traditional Western donor nations which they deem to be distasteful and even downright disgusting.

What makes the anti-gay, lesbian and transgender ranting of a parochial and myopic personality like Mr. Appiah-Ofori worth riposting is the NPP-MP’s rather blasphemous presumption that he is, somehow, uniquely endowed with a manifest destiny to both deputize and legislate morality on behalf of Divine Providence. In the afore-referenced article that appeared in the Ghanaweb.com edition of Dec. 7, 2011, the Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa MP is quoted as follows: “Is that what God asked us to do by saying that we should go out and multiply? Did he say [that] men and men and women and women should sleep and multiply the generation? If He, indeed, said that [then] He is a nonentity.”

Would the Appiah-Oforis of Ghana and elsewhere in the largely homophobic Third-World countries have somebody else decide for them whom they ought to associate with, marry or go to bed with? This is what the fundamental question of human rights is about. And this is where our leaders have miserably failed us.

*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D., is Associate Professor of English, Journalism and Creative Writing at Nassau Community College of the State University of New York, Garden City. He is Director of The Sintim-Aboagye Center for Politics and Culture and author of “Ghanaian Politics Today” (Lulu.com, 2008). E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net. ###