[ad_1]
The Attorney General says parts of Ghana’s Promotion of Proper Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill 2021 are unconstitutional.
Mr. Godfred Yeboa Dam explained that some of the “provisions will violate some basic human rights and freedoms, including the right to privacy.
This is stated in the response of the Chairman of the Committee on Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs of the Verkhovna Rada to the request for memoranda on the government’s position dated October 19, 2022.
According to Godfred Yeboa Dam, the Anti-LGBTQI Bill in its current form will face some fundamental problems in its implementation.
The Anti-LGBTQI+ Bill aims to criminalize the activities of persons who identify as lesbian, gay, transgender, transsexual or queer, who have different socio-cultural ideas about gender, persons who are biologically abnormal in relation to their sex at birth, persons involved in promoting or advocating and funding of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer activities, as well as persons undergoing surgical procedures to change a person’s sex, except for medical purposes.
The anti-LGBTQI bill also places a duty on citizens and relevant independent constitutional bodies to promote and protect proper sexual human rights and family values in Ghana.
The bill also invalidates any unions or marriages entered into between persons of the same sex and persons who have undergone sex or gender reassignment.
However, the Attorney General argued that “parts of the bill as it stands violate some fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution, including the right to freedom of expression, opinion and conscience and freedom from discrimination. However, other provisions of the draft law pass the constitutionality test.”
He added that “unnatural carnal knowledge is defined by section 104(2) as “sexual intercourse with a human being in an unnatural manner or with an animal”.
“Thus, unnaturally revitalizing a person at least 16 years of age with that person’s consent and unnaturally hunting an animal are already criminalized by Act 29 as a misdemeanor. However, the bill seeks to classify the offense as a felony of the second degree, making it inconsistent with the Criminal and Other Offenses (Procedure) Act, 1960 (Act 30), which classifies offenses in Ghana generally and the corresponding penalties.
“However, it should be noted that current Ghanaian legislation does not criminalize all forms of unnatural carnal intercourse or intercourse between persons of the same sex. This is because Section 99 of Act 29 on “Evidence of Carnal Knowledge” provides that evidence of carnal knowledge must be “full proof of the least degree of penetration”.
DISCLAIMER: Views, comments, opinions, contributions and statements made by readers and contributors on this platform do not necessarily reflect the views or policies of Multimedia Group Limited.
[ad_2]
Source link
