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

There was a time when albinos were regarded as a veritable curse on humanity; so Mr. Moses Foh-Amoaning ought to thank his stars that he has been able to secure a respectable job in Ghana, as well as hold a respectable legal practice. In some parts of Africa, even as I write (7/31/13), albinos are being chased down the streets like rats, harassed and persecuted and even sometimes killed with self-righteous glee.

And so what is all this nonsense about Mr. Foh-Amoaning castigating Pope Francis I for aptly observing that he absolutely has no moral authority to damn people in the LGBT community who decide to seek audience with God, as well as the grace of God? (See "Pope Francis Won't Last Long If... - Foh-Amoaning" Daily Graphic/Ghanaweb.com 7/31/13). It is rather silly for anyone to jump onto the obvious and pretend to be making a sound, prophetic statement. The fact of the matter is that Pope Francis is nearly 80 years old, and so it is a matter of course, gauging by the known life-span and/or life-expectancy of his predecessors, that he is not likely to be with us for a very long time.

And it is clearly for this reason why he has been called a transitional figure. We must also, more significantly, underscore the fact that being gay or lesbian, or bisexual, has been conclusively proven to exist in Nature; and you don't see us, humans, going about the forest and among our livestock trying to get rid of these "natural anomalies." So what is this arrant nonsense about the proscription of gay and lesbian lifestyle? Believe me, if Divine Providence wanted to wipe out the LGBT lifestyle, or culture, S/He could have readily done so without soliciting the patently lame and nescient assistance of the morally embarrassing likes of Messrs. Foh-Amoaning and Vladimir Lenin Antwi-Danso.

And even as several well-meaning Ghanaians adumbrated the same to me recently, via E-mail, there are far more pressing and relevant health and socioeconomic problems for us to deal with as a nation than obsess about the sexual orientation of people who have done absolutely nothing to either create or compound these problems. I also don't suppose that Mr. Foh-Amoaning is hereby implying that he appreciates the Holy Scriptures or the Bible far better and more soundly than Pope Francis.

Indeed, like most reputable religions around the globe, "the whole basis of Christianity is to make moral judgments"; but we must also not forget Jesus' warning to his disciples not to be quick to judge others in order that they might not, in turn, be judged as harshly as their enemies and opponents. And so the pertinent question here becomes: What kind of Bible do cynical homophobes like Mr. Foh-Amoaning read? And exactly whose spin and/or interpretation do they project on whatever it is that they read?

According to the Argentinian-born and Italian-descended Pope Francis, the exhortation to Christians not to either discriminate against or marginalize [LGBT] people clearly appears in the Catechism of the Catholic Church; and yet, Mr. Foh-Amoaning would have the rest of us believe that Pope Francis, somehow, does not know what he is talking about! Is this a new form of idiocy that is fast taking grips of a section of the Ghanaian intelligentsia, or it is simply the creeping lunacy of a handful of presumptuous arrivants on the Ghanaian political and intellectual scene?

Mr. Foh-Amoaning also mischievously economizes with the truth, when the Ghana Law School lecturer claims that only about 12 out of the 50 states that make up the United States of America approve of homosexual existence and lifestyle. To be certain, even the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) recognizes the right of people of the LGBT community to conjugal relationships. You see, it is not within the right of any mortal to legislate and/or proscribe homosexual lifestyle and existence. That peremptory authority belongs to Divine Providence. And that was what Pope Francis recently sought to let on to cognitively dissonant people like Messrs. Foh-Amoaning and Antwi-Danso.

What matters here is that law and order prevail in society, and that each and every person live without fear of being persecuted because of their race, ethnicity, religion, gender or sexual orientation. Is this too difficult to understand and/or appreciate?

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*Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Department of English
Nassau Community College of SUNY
Garden City, New York
July 31, 2013
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net
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