By Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.
Garden City, New York
March 8, 2015
E-mail: okoampaahoofe@optimum.net

I personally don't think that the sexual orientation of Vice-President Kwesi Bekoe Amissah-Arthur is anybody else's business, besides his wife and immediate family. Still, it can scarcely be gainsaid that there is a modicum of credibility in the maxim that: "There is no smoke without fire." The question came in the wake of the 2012 demise of then-President John Evans Atta-Mills, and the then-Transitional President John Dramani Mahama selected his late predecessor's tribesman as his his interim-vice and running-mate.

The man himself gave wings to the rumor when he publicly acknowledged that some long-forgotten former associate of his popped practically out of nowhere and demanded hush money, which the then-Bank of Ghana Governor said he had promptly doled out to this "unfortunate" victim of hard times and hard luck, even as he vehemently protested that no homosexual lifestyle existed in his past.

And then just before Mr. Amissah-Arthur passed parliamentary vetting muster, the leader of an association of Ghanaian gay men came public and claimed that the soon-to-be Ghana's Vice-President had attended several meetings held by the group in the recent past. But even more significantly, the head of the gay men's group wanted Mr. Amissah-Arthur to come clean and out of the proverbial closet, as a salutary means of encouraging others of similar sexual bent, or orientation, to liberate themselves, as well as help change the general attitude of the Ghanaian public against the LGBT group in the latter's epic battle for the recognition of its human rights. To the best of my knowledge, Vice-President Amissah-Arthur never responded to the latter revelation.

Still, what makes Mrs. Matilda Amissah-Arthur's recent denial that her husband may be gay or, properly speaking, bisexual very suspect inheres in the fact that the thrust of her denial is as naive as it is inescapably lame (See "We Have Two Children, How Can My Husband Be Gay? 2nd Lady Rubbishes Rumors" MyJoyOnline.com 3/7/15). The fact of the matter is that being gay does not necessarily mean that a male human so categorized cannot have sex with and impregnate a woman. In fact, I personally know several former "heterosexual" men with children who are now living the lifestyle of homosexuality. I have also had a good lesbian friend and colleague confide to me that the overwhelming majority of lesbians, including herself, are bisexual. The friend, who is presently in a torrid homosexual relationship with another colleague of mine, further informed me that in the past when she had struck a good romantic relationship with a man she dearly loved, she had been able to practically shut off that aspect of her sexuality that oriented her towards other women.

What I am clearly suggesting here is that irrespective of the fact of Mr. and Mrs. Amissah-Arthur's having been blessed by Mother-Father Nature with two adult children, or daughters, her husband could still be gay. In other words, the most logical answer to the question of whether Vice-President Amissah-Arthur is gay or not is simply as follows: "No, my husband is not gay. At any rate, the sexuality of my husband is none of anybody else's business but squarely my own." Should could then have added for good measure that: "We have been been married for 36 years. And during this entire period, his virility and/or sexuality has not been the source of any major conflict."

I sincerely don't know that the Joy-Fm Home Affairs program host who asked Mrs. Amissah-Arthur about the Second Lady's husband's sexual orientation had relevance on her side, even though as a journalist she had every right to ask any question that she found to be worthwhile and intriguing. Missionary Position (MP) or Female Dominatrix Posture (FDP)? Button A or Button B? Wallahihi!!!

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