Keep your homosexuality, we’ll keep our polygamy

Being a student, Fridays were the best, some time off the books to begin the weekend in grand style, moving from pub to pub, club to club, mixed or homosexual, all we wanted was getting heavy on the booze.

The Pub

On one usual Friday night, we hit the street literally looking for anywhere we could have fun, Mark, our “drinks expert” suggested we pass through a gay/homosexual club to have some drinks. Without hesitation, we jumped into his rickety car and in minutes arrived.

I had to admit the homosexual pub had a gathering of the most handsome men I had ever found in one place, neatly trimmed looks, very polite and naturally welcoming. Men making out with each other, caressing and holding on to themselves in love and trust, perhaps with more intensity than I do with my girlfriend.

We settled on an outdoor table to order our drinks and that was when a very interesting debate on homosexuality and polygamy came up. One that would draw the attention of a number of the gay men who had gathered at the bar to while and drink the night away.

The debate on Homosexuality

One other friend, John asked if there were similar bars in my country Ghana, and that he’d heard homosexual acts were illegal and punishable by death in Africa. Well in his ignorant mind, Africa was one country with South Africa as the capital. I figured this out when he asked if I’d met a friend of his, a journalist who lived in Tanzania.

I answered that in the capital Accra, some clubs have been rumoured to be gay. However, this was not public knowledge because the society does not openly accept homosexuality and the law on sodomy makes it illegal to have anal sex, between a man and a man or even a man and a woman. I added, “well I don’t see this changing in the foreseeable future”

The shock and ore written on their faces at the point surpassed what Donald Rumsfeld meted out to Sadam Hussein in operation enduring freedom. Someone at the next table who was eavesdropping on our conversation turned and said in a rather disgusting manner, “its Africa, that society will always be backward” … at this point, anger should have been my next course, but I wasn’t angry, because frankly, in many aspects we are backward compared to the West.



The polygamy question

I decided to respond by asking him a question: “Do you support the legalization of polygamy in the UK”. The response was overwhelming, almost in unison, every one of my friends at the table said that could never happen.

Their facial expression drew clearly the impression that, to them, polygamy is appalling, unacceptable and absolutely wrong, because there should be a sense of ownership, dependency and trust between partners.

Indeed, I expected that reaction and for me, that was the best platform to launch the defence of what I believe to be my societal values.

Just so we are clear before I proceed, I don’t HATE Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Homosexuals. They are humans as I am and I respect their choice of sexuality and if they believe they have to fight for their rights, just as the Civil Rights movements, they are free to within the ambit of the law. I will never support violence against anyone or for that matter any group expressing their sexuality.

However, every society has what it holds dear, values they cherish and what it consider vices they won’t tolerate.



Customary marriage

Here in my country Ghana, we have two forms of marriages, ordinance which we picked from the colonial masters and customary marriage, which has been with us since time immemorial.

Under ordinance, marrying more than one, bigamy, is a crime and punishable by a prison sentence, though frankly, I’ve never heard a man or woman prosecuted in Ghana for bigamy.

Under customary marriage, however, a man or woman is not limited to marrying one person (of the opposite sex please). It turns out though, men are almost always the ones that take on more wives, mostly depending on how deep their pockets are. A woman in Ghanaian society dare not marry more than one, the whole scorn of the community will come down the heaviest on her.

The majority of marriages in Ghana are now under ordinance, but there still exist the customary one and many polygamous marriages.



To a large extent, it is acceptable to society and it is not uncommon to find men from my fathers’ and grandfathers’ generations having more than one wife, if not now, at a point in time.

The women in these marriages understood the man is to be shared, and sometimes lived in the same home, taking turns to do house chores or feed the entire family etc.

My grandfather at the time of his death had over 23 children with 6 women and at most points in his life, was married to not less than two women. Many people in my generation will have similar stories to share with their grannies or even fathers and here in Ghana, there is nothing strange or abhorrent about it.



And we have done very well at keeping our polygamy to ourselves and not go about exporting and pushing for it to be legalized or hammering on the doors of others for the rights of a second wife be accepted in jurisdictions such as the UK and other Western Countries.

Polygamy, not a subject to raise
I can bet on my empty bank account that, no country in the Western world will even consider or tolerate Ghana or Africa leading an advocacy for the legalization of polygamy.

So why then is the West branding us as backward, cruel, calling us all manner of names, when we decide to take a firm ‘nay’ stance on not accepting something they like, to be a homosexual?

Our laws make it illegal and the Ghanaian society is not in a position to embrace it.



Human Rights Watch video

Recently Human Rights Watch produced a feature in which some lesbians and homosexuals shared their experiences of being brutalized by their family and community for their sexuality. While I will not discount that some people have attacked persons suspected to be homosexuals in Ghana, the stories of those in the video are very questionable.



One lady in the video spoke of how the society after finding out she was a lesbian attributed drought and other unfortunate events to her. She said one evening the young men in the town forcibly removed her from her home.

She continued that they took her to a place where a fire had been set and petrol was poured on her. It was clear what the intention of the townsfolk was - burn her alive.

According to her, she lost hope after seeing that the police, chiefs, clergy and everyone she could count on to save her, were present to support the actions of the town…well, that was where the story ended.

My first question was if the townsfolk got to this point with the support of all who mattered, how is she still alive?



We are not barbarians

I know the police in Ghana can commit a lot of vices, but I can vouch that they will not standby for the people of a town to take someone from her room to a fireplace and set her alight.

Yes, we have many bogus clergymen who fleece their congregations, and many chiefs who will sell every piece of land they can lay hands on without recourse to the effect on their people, but there is none, who will openly support or witness the burning at stake of any member of society for any crime.

At this point, I’m sure someone will remember the lynching of Captain Adam Mahama and say this is possible. But the circumstances are different and there was no police, clergy and chiefs that supervised that gruesome murder.

Human Rights Watch is absolutely free to go ahead and protect rights of homosexuals (I wonder why they don’t do it in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait), but in doing so, they should interrogate the stories of so-called victims very well, because there are records to indicate people have cooked up stories like this just to get asylum in other countries.



The debate falls silent

Back to the pub, the arguments raged on for hours and I must admit it was more civilized than I anticipated, especially when more people joined. Presently, it had become more of a lecture room, where they were listening to why my Ghanaian society will not accept homosexuality at this point.

“Your society some years ago, criminalized homosexuality, maybe that is where we are, maybe we might continue to stay like that for much longer, but the bottom line is, just as you regard polygamy as sacrilege, we see homosexuality in same light, and remember it’s all about sexuality” I pointed out to them.

“So I will respect your choice to sleep with a fellow man or woman, I want you to respect choice to marry a lot so that I can have sex with more than one woman in a marriage setting, keep your homosexuality and don’t push it to me, I will keep my polygamy and not push it to you”.

There was deafening silence after this, and I calmly walked out of the pub.

The dramatic silence ended the night perfectly