The Intersex Community in Ghana has prayed to Parliament to strike out the controversial anti-gay bill currently before the Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee.
The Constitutional, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee has resumed public hearing on anti-gay bill with many interest groups lined up to make case for and against.
The Committee after its first hearing last year went on a long break due to the presentation of the 2022 budget statement.
Thursday, 17th February 2022 hearing will have presentations from sponsors of the bill, the Christian Council, the Methodist Church, Alliance for equality and diversity among others.
In their presentation, the Inter-sex Community pointed out that their conditions are biological rather than sexual and thus cannot be criminalized.
The Director of Key Watch Ghana, Shone Adjei cited a GhOne TV and Starr News report of two teenagers who were presumed to be girls at birth and brought up as such only to grow and realized they are rather males in the Eastern Region to ground his claim.
He said “these conditions are biological and not sexual and should not be criminalized. Clause 1, 2 and 23 of the promotion of the proper human sexual right of Ghanaian value bill 2021 stands against the following; freedom from torture and ill-treatment, freedom from medication violence, freedom from injury on the body.”
He continued, “Meaning being intersex is a natural manifestation of the body diversity in the human species and not a sexuality or a sexual orientation . This bill seeks to prohibit organizations such as ours from providing peer support of any kind to members, this bill seeks to force surgeries and treatments on the intersex persons, infants and enforce a culture of silence.”
He further stated that “the bill seeks to join us in a group of sexual orientation and identity and we are not happy about that because we are not sexuality but a biological orientation.”
The Director therefore recommended that the clause in “bill 1,2,23 should be scrapped off because it violates human rights.”
Shone Adjei also demanded that clauses in the bill are inimical to the rights of the intersex community and must be struck out of the bill.
Source: Ghana/Starrfm.com.gh/103.5FM
