I have sent this letter to my representatives on Church of England General Synod as clergy in the Diocese of Salisbury, and copied it to my MP, my diocese’s bishops, and Lord Lexden, a government peer who often raises LGBT-related issues in the House of Lords. Please feel free to use it as a basis for letters to your General Synod reps or in your own contexts, church or secular. The internet is full of angry chain e-mails, and politicians and bishops get more than enough of them. Your letter will be received much more warmly if it is polite, and much more powerfully if you and others like you take time to put things in your own words.
Five years in jail, just for saying, “I’m gay” or “I’m trans”. It seems unimaginable that such a law could exist, let alone be supported by Christian leaders. But a Bill currently before Ghana’s parliament would do just that – and the country’s Anglican bishops have come out in favour.
Ghana’s archbishop, the Most Rev’d Dr Cyril Kobina Ben-Smith, has said he and his colleagues will “do anything within our powers and mandate to ensure that the Bill comes into fruition.”
Ghana already criminalises sexual activity between people of the same sex with up to three years in prison. But this law would, astonishingly, make even coming out a crime punishable with a lengthy prison sentence and compulsory so-called conversion therapy. Anyone who advocated for LGBT rights could face up to ten years in prison. Families and professionals who failed to report LGBT relatives or clients would also face jail time. People with naturally occurring physical intersex conditions would be subject to forced surgical procedures.
Archbishop Ben-Smith says this monstrosity of a proposal is a matter of pride and hope: “We as leaders must leave a legacy everyone will be proud of. Christ-like legacy of hope.”
Forced surgery, psychological torture, and lengthy terms in prison a “Christ-like legacy of hope”? Dare we be silent when our brothers and sisters whom Christ died to save face such terror sinfully proclaimed in His holy name? Dare we allow the powerful anti-Christian forces in this country to say that this is what we Christians mean when we talk about our hope in Christ?
We cannot be silent in the face of this horror.
Nor should we believe that our voices will not be listened to. Last year, just before the lockdowns came in, I interviewed one of the most senior figures in the apartheid régime. As South Africa’s Minister of Police from 1986-92, Adriaan Vlok ordered his fellow Christians to be spied upon, tortured, poisoned and bombed, and thought he was defending a Christian state in doing so.
Adriaan has long since repented of the evil he committed, and is one of the few figures from the old racist régime who will speak on the record about those times. Sitting in his front yard just outside Pretoria, he told me that the sources of opposition that weighed most heavily on the minds of top apartheid politicians were churches domestically and around the world, because they believed that as Christians they had to acknowledge what their fellow Christians said. If our voices are strong and united, they can make a difference in Africa.
Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference, which is continually presented as the Anglican Communion’s standard on homosexuality, says that, “We commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons and we wish to assure them that they are loved by God”. How can you listen to someone if you lock them up for speaking honestly? How can you love someone if you are subjecting them to psychological and surgical torture?
I implore you to speak out, especially those of you who disagree with me on the issue of whether the Church should affirm same-sex relationships, because I think your voices will be the most powerful in standing up for fundamental civil liberties in the secular sphere.
I therefore ask:
- Will you publicly call for this Bill not to be passed?
- Will you publicly call for the bishops of the Internal Province of Ghana to withdraw their support for this Bill, reminding them of their commitments under Resolution 1.10 of the 1998 Lambeth Conference?
- Will you ask our Archbishop to publicly call for this Bill not to be passed?
A final point – some of you will be mystified at the reference to Resolution 1.10; others will know exactly what it is and be unhappy that I even mentioned it. The point is that it is used by opponents of accepting same-sex relationships as a basis for stonewalling any change in the status quo. We are not asking for anything new here – just for people around the world to live up to the minimum commitments they made in a resolution introduced to suit opponents of same-sex relationships. And the same basic minimum for trans people.
