What? It's not like if a gay person is threatened with jail they're going to start suddenly having heterosexual sex and having babies.

I know it's a stupid example, but even in the movie "The Brokeback Mountain" the two gay men had families and kids, not only because being gay was ostracized, to put it mildly, but also because having kids was considered a duty, social pressure forced many homosexuals to live a "normal life" to avoid discrimination or worse.

Being gay was dangerous, it could ruin an entire family forever.

There are many ways to push people to do something they are not keen to, draconian laws is one of them.

It’s not even like being gay completely prevents people from having kids! There is surrogacy, and artificial insemination, and always an awful lot of kids without parents. As well as plenty of heterosexual couples with fertility problems that society aids instead of criminalizing. It’s pure bigotry to criminalize being gay, there are plenty of ways to encourage people to have families without doing so.

It's kinda amusing how the fertility/procreation strawman started and is already the leading theory for why this bill has been tabled. If you'd listen to a Ghanaian distill it down for ya:

No one in the country cares what homosexuals do. It's not like married couple already get any benefits from the government. Public display of affection is considered rude: I won't dare to kiss my girlfriend in public. Among a familiar group we may hold hands. Gay or straight the culture of the country forbids sexual expressions. Now why the bill then? My theory is, the opposition party is trying to make the incumbent unpopular. They know the current government/President tends towards liberalism and are taking advantage of it for one of two things: (1) he refuses to assent the bill, in which case his party will face certain defeat in the next election, or (2) assents and faces the wrath of the world. He won't do (2) and very likely will play his cards well to avoid/defer (1).

That is, I consider this the game of politics. Let's see how it plays out.

Of course!

There's nothing wrong in being gay, I was simply discussing why some countries outlaw it.

We are talking about Ghana where all the options you mention are not available to the majority of the population and even if they were, they wouldn't have the money.

Imagine a gay person being responsible for a significant portion of the income of their family, would they risk jail to express themselves or would they not risk to go to jail to not put their family in troubles?

It's, ça va sans dire, unacceptable for our standards.

> We are talking about Ghana where all the options you mention are not available to the majority of the population

Fertility isn't presently a problem in Ghana [1]. If it were, neonatal care is the low-hanging fruit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Ghana#Fertilit...

Yes, but it's Ghana, not California.

"Greater Than Expected Fertility Decline in Ghana"

https://dhsprogram.com/publications/publication-fa32-further...

I fell I have have to explain that I'm totally against it, but politically - that's the reason why this law it's being enforced - it will probably play a role in the political propaganda.

Imagine living under that much pressure to do something you feel no inclination to do. :(

historically, this is absolutely what happened.

source/citation?

for the downvoting and I want to make clear that I am not in any way agreeing, im just stating a pretty clear observation.

social pressure has a strong effect. As an example, quite a number of lawmakers have been caught with homosexual prostitutes, yet they have families. This is because their is a high social cost to not having a wife and children, even if they preferred not to.

Now apply this society wide 200 years ago.

Only around 5% of people are gay and many gay people have children. How can this possibly have a significant impact on birth rate?

Indeed hardly. If you want to push up the birth rate, do the reverse of what is done to (sensibly) limit it: stop girls from getting an education, promote means of maintaining a patriarchal society (e.g, specific branches of organised religion), limit independent journalism, block foreign media — there is a huge list of actually effective strategies to boneheadedly resort to.

Anti-LGBT+ laws serve a different purpose: useful scapegoats. How is this different from Hungary and Poland?

A prominent world-award-winning fantasy author summarized a convincing argument on the subject a number of years back.[1] His argument is that heterosexual marriage is both necessary and challenging because of the natural differences between the sexes. If we remove stigma from same-sex unions, such as through the efforts of activists, men will tend to prefer same-sex relationships because they are simpler and more enjoyable:

  > Men, after all, know what men like far better than 
  > women do; women know how women think and feel far
  > better than men do. But a man and a woman come
  > together as strangers and their natural impulses
  > remain at odds throughout their lives, requiring
  > constant compromise, suppression of natural desires,
  > and an unending effort to learn how to get through
  > the intersexual swamp.

[1] http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2004-02-15-1.html

So the argument is that if being gay is legal, straight men will turn gay because it's easier than dealing with women? And that strikes you as a convincing argument, does it?

Assuming you aren't trolling, it sounds like you are actually homosexual, you don't know it due to your upbringing, and you're projecting because you think (just like you do) all men are suppressing their inner homosexual desires.

Not the first person to do so, either.

That is quite a creative hypothesis to level at the author of this essay and the significant fraction of the world's population who agree with its sentiment.

Have you read what you wrote yourself?

> ... men will tend to prefer same-sex relationships because they are simpler and more enjoyable

(emphasis mine)

The world's population who agree with this sentiment is usually called "gays." Also, there's nothing wrong with being gay. Don't be like one of those preachers who get caught in bed.

Whether it’s a joke or a falsehood, the idea that the opposite sex is hard to understand is widespread and not simply a gay sentiment.

Have you ever heard the saying that men are from Mars, women are from Venus?

Your question is already amply answered by the quotation I included earlier.

It doesn't, but if you try to ground your homophobia in "evolutionary science" or "social capitalism" then you're not a bad person, you're just staying "facts"!

They adopt. There are plenty of children in the foster care system or orphanages depending on the country whose lives would be greatly improved if they lived with parents regardless of the combinations of genitals or gender identity of those parents.

Or those who are richer and/or in richer countries can use various artificial means.

Adoption and surrogate births. Fucking is a very small part of parenthood

I think the overwhelming majority of adopted children would disagree.

One's "real" parents aren't always one's biological parents, even outside of formal adoption (cf. plenty of Americans realizing that their older "sister" is actually their mother).

Sperm bank for women. Surrogate mothers for men.

I know several lesbians who have children.

You’d do well to not speak generally but specifically to the case. Sperm bank for women and surrogate moms are non-existent in Ghana. Take a walk on any random street and ask (1) how that woman became pregnant (2) why the child calls the parent mom or dad and you'll get traditional answers. That said, child birth/procreation isn't what the bill protects. We have no such issue in the country.

the person i answered asked a very general question.

They experiment in college

They have children with heterosexual partners. Old as world.

Let me tell you bout the birds and the bees, and the flowers and the trees.

There's also adoption.

The existing laws against homosexuality in many countries are largely inherited from the era of colonization, which was not an era of self-determination for African nations, to put it mildly. More diverse views of sexuality are likely to be closer to a true representation of normal human behaviors than prohibition. Newer laws, in Ghana in particular, have been similarly influenced by imported ideals from the West.

As another example, before colonization, South American societies were well documented as having attitudes considered quite permissive toward a variety of sexual behaviors as compared to the repressive European powers of the day.

Ironically enough, they are now using anti-Western sentiment to shut down LGBT rights. I remember that one Ugandan guy, Pastor Martin Sempa (sp.) infamous for the “eat the poopoo” video about 10 years ago, going on about how “Africa does not want this sickness. Is this what Barack Obama wants to bring here?” referring to LGBT rights.

Yes this sort of ironic seesaw across times and places is interesting to behold. Sort of reap what you sow kind of thing where old traumas replay themselves across boundaries between people. The positions change back and forth, but the conflict remains.

I'd like to understand why these views persist, and are popular in Africa in particular. What power do they serve and how? Are they simply a simple cause to really behind?

Yes and?

Not to be dismissive, but so what? Shitty white Christians exported homophobia along with Jesus. Okay, great. Glad we cleared that up?

Seems like the Ghanaians are now running with it. People love a scapegoat, and Christians love it to be the Gays. The inclusive society of yore is gone. How do we fix it? I don't think that telling the people of Ghana "you're only homophobic because of imperialism!" is going to help fight this bill.

I was responding to a comment that implied these laws were an example of self-determination, and removing them would be an effort to control population growth.

My comment makes the point that these laws are actually more foreign in origin than they appear, and before they were imposed by the brutal process of colonization, the population was doing just fine.

My comment was never intended to describe how to fight the laws, just to flesh out some background missing from the one I replied to. It is your comment that came in with these additional themes out of left field. My guess is that you felt triggered by the word "colonization" and perhaps by being reminded of the atrocities committed in former colonies. Why these would be an irritant to you is beyond my ability to guess, sometimes truth hurts I suppose?

Let me know if you need any addy help navigating other conversations.

My point is twofold.

1- These are religious traditions that date back to the 1500s. If we can consider chilis a part of Indian national cooking, I think we need to accept that Christianity is a huge part of the national makeup of Ghana, and with it the homophobia present in most denominations.

2- Let's not project on each other. I'm just fine calling colonization a terrible blight and fucked up massive chunks of the world (Antarctica seems fine...), and I can accept that historical/additional context can benefit a discussion but this statement smacked of "blame the West for everything." Of course blame the West, but also blame the people passing this legislation. They don't get a free pass because white people suck. Should the West be trying to fix this, or stay out of it because they should be allowed to run their own government?

Let's rewind a little bit: Who is responsible for this legislation passing in your mind (if multiple parties, please assign what you view as their % of blame). For me it's about 85% to the Parliamentary members sponsoring such legislation, and 15% outside actors with something to gain.

My issue is this: Gay people, my people, are being harmed. Academic discussions about the root causes annoy me when actual blood is being spilled. That's what I'm triggered by, and your comment seemed like one worth responding to instead of the parent (which was gibberish and now flagged)

Appreciate this follow-up response, and I apologize for running with what I perceived as a hostility in your earlier response, it's a struggle for sure.

1) Completely agree, the history is important to understand the threads that continue into the present, but there is no going back.

2) At this point, I think the West should stay out of it in any official capacity, which isn't totally confident statement on my part, but there it is. I also don't think white people suck, and I think focusing on that would be a distraction, the same way it sounds like you do. I intend my criticisms to target abuse of power, which of course happens to fall into the hands of white people fairly often, but it's not the crux in my mind at all. In my original comment I did not mention race for that reason. These kinds of power abuses are ubiquitous wherever people live, and it is absolutely absurd to blame the West or whites as a group for succumbing to the same failures and abusive patterns as people do everywhere.

All of that said... I still think it's important to bring up the lingering influences of colonization, and that an understanding of the forces at play, even going back hundreds of years, is likely crucial to trying to make progress in the present.

> Who is responsible for this legislation passing in your mind

I'm not totally sure, of course from a fundamental view it is the politicians who are enacting the legislation. They are directly responsible for the bill, but I think this is potentially simplistic. Money from outside sources can make a lot of things happen that never would have otherwise, including putting politicians into power and steering their agenda. So if the situation in Ghana can be directly tied to that kind of corruption, I would shift most of the blame to the people who the ultimate driving force behind these bills.

As a fellow gay, I understand your desire to steer the conversation toward more immediate concerns, but I would contest the characterization of the region's history as purely academic. Teasing apart the fractal of influences that create any behavior, including violence toward minorities, can be difficult if not impossible. Spreading more contextual awareness can be a tool to help shift attitudes, at least as far as the limits of a HN comment are concerned.

Good first step would be to stop being extra lenient towards religions. Christians are no longer persecuted or discriminated against anywhere in the Western world; they don’t need extra protections or freedoms.

If you want to be homophobe, it’s fine, but either keep your ideology away from people under 18, or face prison. Same with sponsoring homophobic organizations. Until then nobody should give a crap about your precious religion and how it’s allegedly not a hate-driven crime ring.

> If you want to be homophobe, it’s fine, but either keep your ideology away from people under 18, or face prison.

In Ghana, child rearing is first of all the responsibility of the parent, which imo is a great vanguard against the on-marching groupthink. There's a variety of ideas and beliefs in the country, government has little to no effect on daily life choice, etc.

That said, the country is heavily traditional and it will take several generations until popular opinion is favorable towards public display of homosexual relationship. At the moment it isn't and can't be forced in any non-imperialist way.

Making it illegal in eg Europe to financially support homophobic organizations would reduce their worldwide money supply, and in the long term help their victims in all countries, including Ghana.

There are no homophobic organizations in the country. You don't need people going around stoking hate flames. There are no hate flames to stoke, just people not wanting to see the abnormal. You don't address that with economic sanctions (which seems to be the go-to whip of so-called developed countries). It just won't work.

They are plenty of homophobic organizations, eg the Vatican.

As long as we apply the same rules to all religions, I'm all for it.

What are you defining as "homophobia"? Only actions or also rhetoric? Such definition is not always agreed with ease, I hope we might need such definition clear before prison.

Both. There’s no difference between spreading homophobia and eg spreading drug addiction.

These are no answer to definition, however. Is Christian saying "gay is wrong" punish with jail? Is Christian saying "do bad things to gay people" punish with jail? Is Christian saying "no marrying for gay people" punish with jail? Some combination of some?

None, as long as they don’t try to agitate children. Again, same as with drugs or alcohol. (Well, “do bad things” is a crime, but looks the same of you replace homophobia with any other reasoning.)

I think it's always important to understand the context and history.