Private legal practitioner Dr. Lawrence Ampaw has stated that he’s not part of the LGBTQ community, as a section of the public is bandying around him.
According to the controversial lawyer, some people in the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) have accused him of being gay.
Speaking in an interview, Maurice Ampaw emphasized that he likes women and that there’s no way he can have an affair with his fellow man.
”I hate them (LGBTQ) with passion, even though the NDC has labeled me as gay. If you have a look at me, how can I be gay? The number of girls I have slept with is more than 100. I have five children. My wife, who died, gave me twins, and I told my new spouse to take good care of the twins because they are a gift from God. Just two weeks ago, she also delivered another set of twins. I like women; I don’t like men. Even animals don’t do that.”
In mid-June 2021, Speaker of the Parliament of Ghana Alban Bagbin stated that LGBT+ rights “should not be encouraged or accepted by our society” and that “urgent actions are being taken to pass a law to eventually nip the activities of [LGBT+] groups in the bud.” Later that month, eight MPs in Parliament proposed the Promotion of Proper Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill 2021. The eight MPs were Sam Nartey George, Della Sowah, Emmanuel Kwasi Bedzrah, Alhassan Suhuyini, Rita Naa Odoley Sowah, Helen Ntoso, and Rockson-Nelson Dafeamekpor, all of the National Democratic Congress, as well as John Ntim Fordjour of the New Patriotic Party. On January 1, Alban Bagbin stated that he expected the law to be passed within six months, telling a prayer meeting of Ghanaian MPs that “the LGBT+ pandemic is worse than COVID-19.”
On August 2, 2021, the bill passed its first reading in the Ghanaian Parliament, being referred to the Committee on Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs.
On November 12, 2021, public hearings began on the bill in the Parliament of Ghana. On the first day of hearings, Henry Kwasi Prempeh of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development spoke against the bill, saying that “merely because you see yourself as part of a momentary majority does not entitle you to impose your will on even one individual in society.” Kyeremeh Atuahene of the Ghana AIDS Commission said that the bill risked criminalising anti-HIV/AIDS efforts in the country and also pushing back against donor funding.
On December 6, 2021, Moses Foh-Amoaning of the National Coalition for Proper Human Sexual Rights and Family Values spoke in support of the bill, saying LGBT+ people were “not well, and the law gives [health authorities] the power to restrain such people.”
On July 5, 2023, the Parliament of Ghana unanimously voted to grant the bill a second reading and agreed to minor amendments proposed by the Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs Committee.