Sam George is the MP for Ningo-Prampram
• Sam George is leading the anti-LGBTQ+ bill in parliament
• Many groups and individuals are fighting against the bill
• The MP is convinced this is the biggest battle of his career
Samuel Nartey George, the Member of Parliament for Ningo-Prampram, has confessed that his sponsorship of the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021, has been his biggest political fight ever.
The bill, commonly called the anti-LGBTQ+ bill, seeks to make the practice of homosexuality and activities of LGBTQ+ a criminal offence in Ghana, attracting sanctions on the same levels as second-degree felonies.
The bill has also attracted equal numbers of pro and anti-supporters, a thing that the outspoken MP concedes surpasses all the battles he has ever had to come face to face with in his career.
Speaking on the Thursday, October 14, 2021, edition of Good Morning Ghana on Metro TV, Sam Nartey George said that the forces fighting him now are different from all he’s ever fought before but he is unfazed.
“Coming up against these academic principalities and legal powers, this is clearly by far has been the biggest battle I’ve been up against in my short political career but it’s something I’m extremely convinced about, something I’m convicted about, and something I’m confident we will be victorious about. It is not my fight; it is our fight,” he said.
Earlier, the Presiding Bishop of the Perez Chapel, Bishop Charles Agyinasare, said a special prayer for Sam George, who is an elder in his church, asking God to protect him from any form of evil attack as he spearheads this bill.
The anti-gay bill seeks to make the promotion, advocacy, funding, and acts of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) criminal offences in the country.
In the meantime, 18 prominent people have rejected the proposed anti-gay bill in parliament.
A private legal practitioner Mr. Akoto Ampaw, has said the way and manner the anti-gay bill has been designed indicates the extremism of the mind frame that produced it.
He is totally against the bill and wants it abandoned.
“The fact that the bill goes to that extent of criminalising somebody who is an intersex or criminalising somebody who is asexual, this is a meaningless project, shows the extremism of the mind frame that produced that bill,” he said on TV3’s Key Points with Dzifa Bampoh on Saturday, October 9.
He further said the current debate on homosexuals in Ghana is not about religious beliefs or numbers.
“First of all, I want to make the point clear that this debate is not about religious beliefs.
“Secondly, this debate is not about numbers. It is not lining up how many people support gays -30million, how many people are against gay – 2million, that is not the issue.
“The fundamental issue has to do with our constitution and rights. That is the basic issue that we have to address.”