THE First Minister is expected to raise the issue of gay rights with the President of Ghana during his visit to Holyrood today.
Nicola Sturgeon has been under increasing pressure to discuss it with John Dramani Mahama as they meet against a backdrop of growing vigilante violence against gay people in his home country, where the punishment for homosexual acts is one to three years in jail.
He is set to observe First Minister’s Questions and will tomorrow receive an honorary degree from the University of Aberdeen as part of a wider tour of Scotland.
Presiding Officer Tricia Marwick, who will also meet him, has said she will not raise gay rights, with the parliament saying it is not her place to do so.
The Scottish Government had previously said it would discuss "issues of mutual interest" but yesterday said Ms Sturgeon would share her views on the "values of humanity, equality and tolerance"
Colin MacFarlane, director of Stonewall Scotland, described the visit as a “key moment” and called for the equality issues to be raised.
He said: “We sincerely hope that the Scottish Government will use this visit as an opportunity to demonstrate its support for LGBT equality internationally.
“While we’ve seen some promising statements from President Mahama criticising violence against LGBT communities, we believe that the Scottish Government has an important responsibility to help advance the protection of LGBT rights across the world, and this visit is a key moment.
“At Stonewall, we also believe in always engaging activists on the ground for their guidance on how opportunities for dialogue, such as this, could be of benefit to them, so we are actively reaching out to Ghanaian activists on this point.”
A Scottish Government spokeswoman said last night that it had a “positive record of raising LGBT issues and encouraging equality around the world, for example through our support for Pride House during the Commonwealth Games”.
She added: “During the First Minister and President Mahama’s short meeting she will share her strong view that the Commonwealth values of humanity, equality and tolerance are universal values.”
While President Mahama has previously stated he does not believe gay people should be killed or beaten because of their sexuality, his government has said it will “not take any step to promote homosexualism in Ghana.”
Homosexual acts are officially termed as “unnatural carnal knowledge” under Ghanaian law, and violent attacks based on sexuality are routinely ignored by police according to activists.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel