“I will assure you that I will mention names of any person who tries to obstruct the legitimate processes to see this Bill through,” Speaker Alban Bagbin said in his opening address Tuesday, Nov. 3, as Ghana’s Parliament reconvened in Accra, 3News reported.
“I have told His Excellency the President and he is in total agreement with me and so the Bill is now going through that stage again,” Bagbin said of Ghana’s anti-LGBTQ bill, officially the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill, 2025.
MPs passed it May 29, but it never went to President John Mahama, and Bagbin announced Oct. 23 that it would get a second consideration.
“Our intention is to finish it before we go on the recess at this meeting,” Bagbin said.
Majority Leader James Agalga said Tuesday the House would take the bill up during this meeting and that Mahama would assent if Parliament passes it, Adomonline reported.
Bagbin Wants a Do-Over on the May 29 Vote
Bagbin also said he’s “not happy with the sentencing regime, the sanctions” in the May text, according to 3News.
“The point we are making here is that this is watering down the point that you wanted Akufo-Addo to sign,” Bosome-Freho MP Nana Asafo-Adjei Ayeh, of the Minority, said back in May, Pulse Ghana reported.
Afenyo-Markin Says Blanket Exemptions Are ‘a Dilution’
“Rights must be protected by precise drafting, consistent with the 1992 Constitution. Blanket exemptions are not safeguards, they are a dilution,” Minority Leader Alexander Afenyo-Markin said Tuesday, taking aim at May amendments that shield lawyers who advise or represent LGBTQ people, Adomonline reported.
“We don’t want any late amendments carved out or delayed to water it down. Every member must vote on the actual text,” Afenyo-Markin said.
“We, the Minority, will want to secure two things: that citizens’ rights are protected and that the original bill, that the NDC promised and passed in opposition, should be the same bill that must be signed by President John Dramani Mahama,” he said.
The Prison Terms in Ghana’s Family Values Bill
“We call on the Committee to recommend against its passage,” Human Rights Watch’s Larissa Kojoue and Alex Müller wrote in a March 30 memo to the parliamentary committee that reviewed the bill.
The text MPs approved keeps the current penalty of up to three years in prison for same-sex sexual acts, according to Reuters.
(In Niger, a revised penal code made same-sex relationships a crime for the first time in February, and community groups say HIV prevention there has been disrupted, Gayety reported.)
Will Mahama Sign Ghana’s Anti-LGBTQ Bill?
“There’s still quite a while to go before that bill becomes law,” Mahama said at Chatham House in London on June 1, MyJoyOnline reported.
“We will look at it and make sure that everything is in order,” Mahama said, the BBC reported.
“He will sign it, and I’m telling you, the president won’t shy away from it,” Majority Chief Whip Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor said in June, according to MyJoyOnline.
