The Legislation
Ghana’s Parliament passed an amended Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025 on 29 May. This revived a piece of legislation that had already passed Parliament in February 2024 but died when the previous Parliament was dissolved without presidential assent. The bill is now before President John Mahama for assent.
Ghana already had a colonial-era criminal law against same-sex sexual activity. This was section 104 of the Criminal Offences Act which criminalises what it calls “unnatural carnal knowledge.” This law treats consensual same-sex intercourse between adults as a misdemeanour. The provision is inherited from British colonial criminal law.
The new bill goes much further. It criminalises not only certain sexual acts but LGBTQ identity, advocacy, promotion, funding and association. Human Right Watch’s analysis of the 2025 bill says that Section 3(1)(e) would prohibit a person from identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, pansexual, non-binary, queer, an ally, or any other identity outside the male-female sexual binary stipulated by the law. Sections dealing with advocacy, association and funding provide for sentences of up to ten years. The bill also creates a mandatory reporting regime.
There are some exemptions in the version Parliament passed in May 2026. Lawyers providing legal representation, journalists reporting professionally on LGBTQ matters, and medical and mental-health professionals providing services are exempted from some sanctions. But these exemptions do not change the central character of the bill: it seeks to make LGBTQ identity, and organised LGBTQ existence matters of criminal law. This is different from simply maintaining an old ban on homosexual sex. It aims to regulate identity, speech, association and solidarity.
And this did not begin in 2026.
A colonial legacy
The argument that homosexuality is simply a foreign Western import collapses when we look at the history of Ghanaian law. The criminalisation of same-sex sexual activity was written into the legal systems of British colonies. An independent Ghana inherited the British legal tradition that treated certain sexual acts as “unnatural” and retained those provisions.
This underscores an important contradiction. The same politicians and religious leaders who describe queerness as “Western” often defend a law whose legal foundation comes from Britain’s colonial criminal code. Human Rights Watch has described Ghana’s “unnatural carnal knowledge” provision as a relic of British colonialism.
This does not mean that precolonial African societies were uniformly accepting of homosexuality. They were not. African societies, like societies everywhere, had their own rules and notions about sexuality, gender, marriage and family. But it does mean that the modern criminal-law framework used to police homosexuality cannot honestly be presented as some untouched ancient African tradition.
Religious institutions – the Church’s stance
Modern Ghana like most African countries, is deeply religious, and Christianity has enormous political and cultural influence. The anti-LGBTQ campaign has therefore never been only a parliamentary project. Churches, Pentecostal organisations, Catholic leaders, traditional authorities and Muslim leaders have all participated in different ways.
In October 2021, the Christian Council of Ghana and the Ghana Pentecostal and Charismatic Council issued a joint statement supporting the proposed legislation and describing LGBTQ identities as alien to Ghanaian culture and family values. Other religious organisations also supported the bill.
The Catholic Church’s position has been more complicated than the simple phrase “the churches support the bill” suggests. The Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference has opposed homosexual acts on theological grounds and supported the general direction of the legislation. In December 2023, the bishops stated that homosexual acts were incompatible with Catholic teaching and their understanding of Genesis and marriage.
But some Catholic bishops have also questioned the wisdom of criminalising people simply for being homosexual but have patronizingly called for different forms of conversion therapy. Cardinal Peter Kodwo Apiah in an interview with the BBC, criticised imprisonment as a solution acknowledging queerness as a historical part of Ghanaian culture while Bishop Matthew Kwasi Gyamfi, president of the Ghana Catholic Bishops’ Conference, called for forced conversion for queer people instead of imprisonment.
Evangelical dollars
One of the most important moments came in 2019, when the World Congress of Families held a major conference in Accra. The World Congress of Families is a US-based conservative organisation with longstanding connections to international religious right-wing forces. Human Rights Watch warned at the time that the organisation had helped export anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation around the world, including in Africa.
This is where the story becomes especially uncomfortable for anyone who insists that Ghana’s anti-LGBTQ politics are purely indigenous. Because foreign conservative organisations were not simply observing Ghana. They were networking with African politicians, religious leaders and activists.
Family Watch International, led by American conservative activist Sharon Slater, has also played an important role in the international “pro-family” movement. Its work has included campaigning against LGBTQ rights, abortion and comprehensive sexuality education. The organisation has been active in African political networks and has participated in conferences involving African lawmakers.
And the relationship did not end with Ghana. Uganda is perhaps the clearest example of this influence wielding. American evangelical organisations have spent years building relationships with Ugandan politicians and religious leaders. One of the most notorious figures is the American evangelical Scott Lively, who travelled to Uganda and promoted theories portraying homosexuality as a dangerous social conspiracy.
The wider American evangelical network has spent substantial money on African anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion campaigns. One estimate found that US evangelical groups spent more than $20 million in Uganda between 2007 and 2020 fighting LGBTQ rights.
The broader US anti-rights movement has also spent millions across Africa on related campaigns. The Associated Press recently reported that anti-abortion groups including Focus on the Family and Family Watch International spent at least $16 million in Africa between 2019 and 2022 on campaigns connected to anti-abortion, sexuality and gender politics and policy formulation. What can be established is that American conservative organisations have built networks across Africa, have held conferences in Ghana, have trained and networked with African politicians, and have promoted legislation and political language remarkably similar to the Ghanaian legislation.
Whose Sovereignty?
Examining foreign influence is important because the strangest argument of the modern African anti-LGBTQ movement is its claim of upholding sovereignty.
Our politicians say:
“We’re African.”
“This is our culture.”
“The West should mind its business.”
This same rhetoric was popular during and after the Same Sex Marriage Prevention Act (SSMPA) legislation in Nigeria. But some of the most important institutions helping to organise these movements are based in the United States and Europe. This contradiction is not a small detail. It is central to understanding the movements’ politics.
In June 2026, Ghana hosted the African Inter-Parliamentary Conference on Family Values and Sovereignty. Lawmakers from more than 20 African countries participated. The conference promoted an “African Charter on Family, Sovereignty and Values” and attacked what participants described as Western ideological colonisation. However, the event itself was embedded in international conservative networks.
This is a contradiction that is important to highlight. It exposes the hypocrisy of African leaders. This is not sovereignty. It is at best a sham of sovereignty. African people have every right to reject Western governments and organizations telling them what laws to pass. But that principle must apply equally to Western conservatives exporting religious and cultural warfare into Africa. You cannot reject Western liberal influence while welcoming Western reactionary influence.
The class question
There is another reason this politics is powerful. Anti-queerness can produce a strange kind of class solidarity. The wealthy businessman, the politician, the pastor and the unemployed young man do not have the same economic interests. The politician has power and access to state resources, The businessman owns capital, The priest has an elevated social standing. The worker sells his labour, and the unemployed person is in a distraught position.
Yet they can temporarily be brought together around the idea that there is a common enemy threatening “the family.” And that enemy is presented as the queer person. Suddenly, the worker who should be asking why wages are low is encouraged to rather ask why his neighbour is gay. The young person who should be asking why education is unaffordable is told that the real threat to Ghana is transgender people. The poor family facing rent increases is prodded to believe that the greatest danger to the household is a lesbian woman.
The political elite and bosses get something extremely valuable from this. A divided society that is temporarily united around a manufactured moral enemy. This is one reason anti-queer politics thrives across class lines, helping to forge consensus of focus between the exploited and their exploiters against a contrived “other”.
The boss and the worker may have completely opposing economic interests. But they can stand together and say: “We must protect the sanctity of the family.”
And once the worker begins fighting the queer person rather than the boss, class conflict has been redirected, even if just for a while.
Patriarchy is the foundation
Homophobia cannot be separated from misogyny and patriarchy. Traditional patriarchy assigns social roles. The man is supposed to be masculine, dominant, economically productive and sexually assertive. The woman is supposed to be feminine, reproductive, obedient and oriented toward the family. Queer people disrupt those expectations. A gay man challenges the assumption that masculinity must be directed toward women. A lesbian challenges the assumption that a woman’s sexuality is to cater to men only. A transgender person challenges the assumption that so called biological sex must dictate every aspect of social identity. And women who refuse traditional roles are punished.
This is why anti-LGBTQ politics frequently travels alongside attacks on feminism, reproductive rights, sex education and women’s autonomy. The Ghanaian bill itself reflects this wider ideological project. Human Rights Watch has noted provisions concerning gender identity, sexuality education and the male-female binary alongside the criminalisation of LGBTQ identities and advocacy.
The target is therefore bigger than gay sex. The target is to reinforce the social order that says there is one legitimate way to be a man, one legitimate way to be a woman and one legitimate form of family.
Capitalism did not invent patriarchy, but it uses it
Patriarchy predates modern capitalism. It is welded into class-divided societies. But capitalism has powerful reasons to preserve certain patriarchal arrangements, it benefits from unpaid domestic labour. Someone must raise children, care for the elderly, and maintain the household. Historically, much of this work has been pushed onto women and treated as private-family rather than social-economic labour.
The traditional heterosexual family therefore performs an important economic function. It reproduces labour by raising the next generation of workers and absorbing social costs that the state and employers would otherwise have to pay for. And it creates a social institution in which women exploitation can be hidden behind the language of duty, sacrifice and love.
This makes queerness unpalatable for the bosses because it rejects this arrangement. This is why the fight against patriarchy cannot simply be treated as a cultural side issue. It is connected to the organisation of work and wealth. And this is why queer liberation cannot be separated from class politics.
The People Who Refuse to Disappear
This article is not just a story of politicians, priests, colonial laws and American conservative organisations. It is also a story of people who refuse to be silenced. One of them is Angel Maxine. Angel Maxine is an openly transgender Ghanaian musician and an activist who has used music as political resistance. Her songs have become part of the struggle against the anti-LGBTQ campaign.
In 2021, she released “Kill the Bill” to protest an earlier version of the bill introduced in Parliament. Her other song, “Wo Fie,” meaning “your home” in Twi, delivered an even deeper message: its video opened with the words “Ghana is colonially homophobic.” Catchy and joyful, the song rejects the idea that queerness is foreign to Ghana but asserts that queer Ghanaians have an equal claim to the country as their home.
Angel Maxine later left Ghana after threats on her life became intensified. Reuters reported that she feared for friends who remained behind after Parliament passed the bill in 2024.
Then there is Alex Kofi Donkor, the founder and director of LGBT+ Rights Ghana. Donkor helped build a community centre when the state and society were telling queer people to hide. His organisation’s objective is simple: create safe spaces, defend equality and build alliances between queer people and their supporters. His story is important because activism is not only about winning legislation. Sometimes activism means creating a room where somebody who has been told their whole life that they are disgusting can sit down and breathe. Sometimes it means answering a phone call. Sometimes it means giving someone a community.
The Struggle must not Divided
The Ghanaian anti-LGBTQ campaign should therefore not be understood as simply a cultural disagreement about homosexuality. It is part of a larger political struggle. It is about who controls the body. Who defines the gender, family and morality. Who gets to speak, organise and live openly. And whose life is valuable. That is why socialists cannot treat queer liberation as an optional issue. There is a temptation in radical spaces to say: “Workers first. LGBTQ issues later.” That is a mistake because there is no liberation in which some workers are told that they must remain invisible. There is no socialist future in which women are still subordinate. There is no revolutionary politics that reproduces the same patriarchal hierarchy inside its own movement.
And there is no serious struggle against capitalism if we refuse to understand how capitalism, patriarchy, religion, nationalism and class power can reinforce one another. The answer cannot be to replace one hierarchy with another. It cannot be to tell queer workers that they must wait until after the revolution. The path to revolution must already contain the values of the world we claim to want. It is is our duty as revolutionary socialists to fight for this in every space we occupy.
Our self-emancipatory struggle must unite feminism, queer freedom, workers’ rights, and opposition to racism, patriarchy, ableism, and every system that denies exploited and oppressed people dignity, irrespective of their race, ethnicity, nationality or sexual orientation.
by Emmanuel EDOMWONYI
