FREEING MY MIND 2
I have over months tried to stay out of this GAY issue that is hitting the airwaves. I have battled with myself and conscience over whether I should write a piece on this issue or not but the happenings of this morning as I journeyed to work has given me the urge to write this. Before your prejudices sets in and you become all judgmental on me I will like to state categorically that this is not an attack on any religious group or persons but just my candid opinion of what I see and hear all around me. For the records if there is on group of people I detest so much in life it is the people who practice the sexuality of Gays and not for a second will I condone and connive with such act on any given day. I’m one of those who believes in change and not always conforming to all the ways of society, but on the issue of sexuality I adamantly stand for the view that a sexual relationship should be strictly between a MAN and a WOMAN and that my friends is the way it should be.
Now that at least you know my stand I will like to proceed with what I observed this morning whilst was listening to Kojo Oppong Nkrumah’s show on JOY fm when people called in to talk about gays and whether they will vote for or against any politician who supported gay rights. From my own estimation, because I lost count of the number people who called, 90 percent of them in their submissions made reference to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible stating categorically that it was because of Gayism that those two towns were destroyed by God. You see I have not been reading my Bible of late and for that I have no excuse whatsoever but hearing this, my mind went back to those days in Sunday school where I first heard this story. And not once did I remember that God said he was destroying Sodom and Gomorrah because it was a gay haven. To be sure and yet again double sure, I have re-read the story from the Bible again and it is not what we are presenting it to be. God told Abraham that he was going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because of their wickedness and sinful ways and it is not until the verse 3 of Genesis chapter 19 that we get hint of gays being part of the township and this has raised a lot of questions in my head which might make me deviate from the course I want to take with this article concerning morality and religion.
Most often than not morality is Ghana is tied to Christianity as if other religions practiced in Ghana have no code of conducts or moral norms and values. I think our knowledge of right and wrong is innate in us. Religion gets its morality from humans. We know that we can't get along if we permit perjury, theft, murder, rape, all societies at all times, well before the advent of monarchies and certainly, have forbidden it... Socrates called his daemon, it was an inner voice that stopped him when he was trying to take advantage of someone... Why don't we just assume that we do have some internal compass. Now let’s look at it from this point. A man has a penis and a woman a vagina, the penis transports sperms from the scrotum into the vagina so the sperm can fertilize the egg in the fallopian tube and the result is pregnancy which metamorphoses into a human being after some 9 months and that is how we were all brought to this world. I therefore do not need religion to tell me that that is the way of life and that when I’m grown up and wants to have kids to I need a woman and not man to have sexual relationships with. Look let’s be realistic for once and hang our religious boots. Man is a primate. All primates have innate morality. A moral sense is vitally important to the efficient running of any society or group. There are no amoral primate groups anywhere. The Mafia have morals, baboons have codes. There are differences between the various groups and their codes of morality but all primate groups have some morals and standards of behavior. Religion is also very common but it is not universal and it did not cause the codes or the instinct to observe them. These are facts that need to be clearly stated. Morality does not require religion especially when it comes to the issues of seeing being gay as wrong.
There are some things which just are not right no matter how good we paint them. Like a decorated baboon they will always be a baboon. In my opinion, if God wants to punish Ghana now it not because of just Gays but also the numerous social vices that are prominent in our societies. Way before religion and for that matter all religions that are not indigenous to Ghana came to bear our forefathers had norms and values that guarded the integrity of our communities and it is that we should all stand for when it comes to this silly issue of gays
I’m beginning to feel that these gays and their issues are even gaining more prominence on our air waves than issues that really need to be discussed for the unification and development of our dear country spiritually, socially and economically. Let us see religion as a way to catch the attention in order to reinforce the messages of the natural morality that we as a humans are already responding to.
