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Opinions of Wednesday, 29 November 2017

Columnist: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.

The sexual pervert and gay rights

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A few weeks ago, the Tamale-North’s National Democratic Congress’ Member of Parliament, Mr. Alhassan Suhuyini, was widely reported to have asked an interviewer and the host of a TV program to lift up her dress so that he, Mr. Suhuyini, himself a sometime media operative, could inspect the undies of that female talk-show host. Now, what do you call this sort of “queer” behavior but sexual perversion?! In other words, the Tamale-North’s NDC-MP is a sexual pervert.

And now, Mr. Suhuyini would have Ghanaians believe that it is rather President Addo DankwaAkufo-Addo who has unwisely opened a can of worm or, if you like, Pandora’s Box, by telling an Al-Jazeera television interviewer that with time, mainstream Ghanaian perspective and opinion on homosexuality could swing from the present extreme detestation of the practice to a sobering acceptance and tolerance of this veritable act of humanity within a couple of generations, just as it has occurred in present-day Britain (See “Akufo-Addo Likely to Spark Homosexual Agitation – MP Suhuyini”

Isn’t it rather preposterous and abjectly condescending for a clinically certified sexual pervert and emotionally stunted reprobate like Mr. Suhuyini to suggest that, somehow, members of the Ghanaian gay community are too intellectually obtuse, or unenlightened, to fully appreciate the most appropriate and effective means of agitating for their inalienable human and civil rights, and may actually have to be prompted in such direction by President Akufo-Addo?

Even more scandalous is the insufferably lame comparison that these pathologically cynical main opposition party critics draw between the public stance of the late President John Evans Atta-Mills, the man who brazenly and impudently promoted the criminal activities of mega-scam artists like Mr. Alfred AgbesiWoyome, and that of President Akufo-Addo, whose all-too-pragmatic stance on this admittedly highly controversial and volatile issue is to let the collective historical growth and maturity of Ghanaians, and the proverbial temper of the times, take or dictate their own logical courses.

Interestingly but hardly surprisingly, politically and culturally benighted young Ghanaian leaders like Mr. Suhuyini are having a hard time cracking the riddle so limpidly unearthed and sagaciously thrust into the public domain by the partly British-educated Nana Akufo-Addo. But that the same trundling juggernaut of history that swept President Atta-Mills into the subliminal recesses of our epic memory is highly likely to immortalize the at once pragmatic and witty perspective of President Akufo-Addo on the critical question of the country’s evolving stance on homosexuality, is what these narcissistic NDC political operatives are finding next to the downright impossible to appreciate and acknowledge.

One wonders what the faculty of their so-called Institute for Social Democracy are teaching their captive students and audiences these days. It is also pathetic for the leadership of the Christian Council of Ghana, among a plethora of other civil society organizations, to be demanding further explanation on his clear-cut stance on homosexuality from the President of our august Republic. And to think that these are the same leaders who recently demanded to have the government return the European missionary-founded schools to their absolute control, makes matters all the more bizarre, to speak much less about the utmost disgusting.

But that the late President Atta-Mills, who vowed never to legalize homosexuality, actually opened the sluice gates to the wanton thievish exploitation by NDC robber-baron politicians of the Ghanaian taxpayer, including the catastrophic scamming of the Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT), to the apocalyptic tune of $ 72 million, ought to give all patriotic Ghanaians great pause before unwisely falling for the cunning usage of the patent nonissue of homosexuality as a sly and deft distraction for NDC shenanigans, especially in view of the recent passage of the law empowering Attorney-General Gloria Akuffo to establish the long overdue and direly needed Office of the Independent Special Prosecutor.

Nana Akufo-Addo should not waste his very limited and precious official working time drafting reams of vacuous apologies for these tunnel-visioned homophobic critics. If the likes of Mr. Suhuyini still find the President’s simple policy pronouncement on the gay issue to be as arcane as rocket science or nuclear physics, they can enroll themselves into one of the fee-free Senior High Schools for deliberate and systematic instruction on the subject.