{"id":3916,"date":"2024-03-11T14:52:52","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T14:52:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/?p=3916"},"modified":"2024-03-11T14:52:54","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T14:52:54","slug":"i-support-the-anti-lgbtq-bill-but-against-imprisoning-gays-vincent-assafuah","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/?p=3916","title":{"rendered":"I Support The Anti-LGBTQ Bill But Against Imprisoning Gays \u2013 Vincent Assafuah"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Vincent Ekow Assafuah, Deputy Minister-designate for the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development has acknowledged that while he wholeheartedly supports the passage of the anti-LGBTQ+ bill, he believes that merely ostracising gays from society is not the solution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He advocated for parliament to be interested in the reformation of homosexuals and not allow them to go astray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Parliament on February 28 passed the bill on Human Sexual Rights and Family Values also known as the anti-LGBTQ+ bill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bill proscribes LGBTQ+ activities and criminalizes their promotion, advocacy, and funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Persons caught in the act would be subjected to six months to three-year jail term with promoters and sponsors of the act bearing a three-to-five-year jail term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<div class=\"ose-youtube ose-uid-1083d2677a4919d7cbdb9d5908084d96 ose-embedpress-responsive\" style=\"width:400px; height:400px; max-height:400px; max-width:100%; display:inline-block;\" data-embed-type=\"Youtube\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allowFullScreen=\"true\" width=\"400\" height=\"400\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_mQaaltEIRI?feature=oembed&color=red&rel=0&controls=1&start=&end=&fs=0&iv_load_policy=0&autoplay=0&mute=0&modestbranding=0&cc_load_policy=1&playsinline=1\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; encrypted-media;accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;gyroscope;picture-in-picture clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen referrerpolicy=\"origin\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking on the bill during his vetting by Parliament\u2019s Appointment\u2019s Committee in Accra on Monday, March 11,&nbsp; Mr Assafuah indicated that it was parliament\u2019s responsibility to ensure the reformation and integration of gays back into society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIn principle, the LGBTQ bill that has been passed or approved by parliament is one that I support wholeheartedly because it aligns with my tradition and culture. It aligns with my formation as a catholic person or practicing catholic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHowever, there are reasons for punishment to be meted out to people. There is a principle behind punishment and one of the principles is to ensure that a person is being reformed out of a criminal activity. And so, if we have to reform persons, do we have to mete out punishment that seems to ostracize the person from society? It seems that as a society, we are bringing out our failures in the sense that we are showing our inability or incapacity to be able to reform people or if you like put people through sessions that reintroduce such persons into society. If we are not able to do so. That is where I see the failure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cIt seems we are throwing our hands in despair. I am making a strong point that as a Parliament, we should be very interested in reforming our people. That is our responsibility as a people. We cannot say that there is a supposed anticipation of gay persons being lynched if they are given community service and so because of that as the people\u2019s representatives we are throwing our hands in despair to allow such persons just to go astray.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThat cannot be our course. Let\u2019s have a proper forum, let\u2019s have proper engagements to see how best we can deal with such persons. It is our responsibility to do so,\u201d he stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vincent Ekow Assafuah, Deputy Minister-designate for the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralisation and Rural Development has acknowledged that while he wholeheartedly supports the passage of the anti-LGBTQ+ bill, he believes that merely ostracising gays from society is not the solution. He advocated for parliament to be interested in the reformation of homosexuals and not allow [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[861,1317],"class_list":["post-3916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","tag-anti-lgbtq-bill","tag-vincent-assafuah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3916"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3918,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3916\/revisions\/3918"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fishfmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}