Stigmatisation of the LGBTQ + community and human insecurity in Ghana

The paper assesses how and why Ghana’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, and asexual/aromantic (LGBTQ+) community experiences growing stigmatization and increased human insecurity. The key question is: Why did Ghana’s democratically elected parliament unanimously pass an anti-LGBTQ+ bill - ‘The Human Sexual Rights and Ghanaian Family Values Bill, 2024’ – which, if signed into law by the president, would significantly undermine LGBTQ+ democratic rights? State and non-state agents stigmatize and increase human insecurity for Ghana’s LGBTQ+ community. Means and venues to perpetuate stigmatization and human insecurities, include discursive frames, use of traditional and social media employing disinformation campaigns, legal-political narratives appropriating anticolonial discourse, social polarisation, and a transnational coalition with the US Christian Right. Interlinked methods of stigmatisation and generating insecurities render authoritarianism an everyday phenomenon. The anti-LGBTQ+ campaign seeks in part to take attention away from the government’s failure to curb corruption or improve social equality.