My children must be straight—Stonebwoy on LGBT

The bill was submitted to the Committee on Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs after it passed its first reading in the Ghanaian Parliament on August 2, 2021.

Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu, the majority leader in the Parliament, declared on October 13, 2021, that the legislature will guarantee a “careful balance” when evaluating the bill.

Constitutional, Legal, and Parliamentary Affairs Committee deputy majority leader Alexander Kwamina Afenyo-Markin indicated on November 5, 2021, that the committee will start hearing petitions in a week and projected that “we are looking at 15 weeks for the hearings to be done.”

Public hearings on the bill were held in the Ghanaian Parliament on November 12, 2021. Henry Kwasi Prempeh of the Ghana Centre for Democratic Development spoke against the measure on the first day of hearings, stating that “you are not entitled to impose your will on even one individual in society simply because you see yourself as part of a momentary majority.” According to Ghana AIDS Commission member Kyeremeh Atuahene, the law runs the risk of criminalizing the nation’s efforts to combat HIV/AIDS and of retaliating against donor assistance.

Speaking in favor of the measure on November 30, 2021, Akwasi Osei of Ghana’s Mental Health Authority argued that the majority of LGBT+ individuals in Ghana claimed to be queer due to peer pressure and that homosexuality was unnatural. On that day, Ghana’s Commissioner of Administrative Justice and Human Rights, Joseph Whittal, advised the Parliament to “be careful on the bill,” noting that the Commission was neither in favor of nor against it, but that it ran the possibility of subjecting human rights advocates to criminal prosecution.

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.