Cardinal Peter Turkson, a Vatican insider widely seen as a possible contender to be Africa’s first pope, has expressed his position on Ghana’s stance to criminalize LGBTQ+ activities.
The 75-year-old Ghanaian prelate, while in an interview on BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur, reiterated his belief in decriminalizing homosexual activities, especially in Ghana, when asked about the recent anti-LGBTQ bill in parliament.
The Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, declared the pending anti-LGBTQ bill “the most important” in the house and has ordered the Committee to expedite work on it.
“My position is contrary to what has just been passed. To criminalize anyone, you need to be able to identify the crime. LGBTQ’s are not to be criminalized”, the cardinal said on the criminalization of LGBTQ activities.
He also discussed the origins of the anti-LGBTQ measure, in his opinion, saying, “This is the cause of all this in Ghana; the Ghanaian culture has known of people with such tendencies, and I say this because there is an expression, in the local Akan language of mine, of men who act like women and women who act like men. It means that this phenomenon has been known in the culture and community, but nobody went on to make a policy out of it. I think what caused all of these was an attempt to link some foreign donations and grants to certain positions.”
