Using the recent passage of the controversial anti-LGBTQI+ Bill in Ghana as a starting point, this presentation aims to add vigour to the religion-state tensions in post-independence Africa. It demonstrates how the coexistence and competing claims of religious, legal, and political orders in contemporary Ghana give an ambivalent picture of the country’s secularity. The presentation aims to showcase that while a professed secular state, in the public domain, the “religious factor” continues to be vital for lawmaking and enforcement processes as well as political mobilisation, raising issues of human rights concerns. I will contend despite the many dissenting voices, the deployment of religious arguments to legislate homosexual activities in the public domain has neither discredited Ghana’s secular orientation nor emboldened its supposed religious foundation. Rather, it pinpoints a cardinal feature of the country’s moderate and strategic secular orientation. The presentation further argues that, in the Ghanaian public sphere, religion is not only a limiter, but also a promoter of secular ideals. Using the recent passage of the controversial anti-LGBTQI+ Bill in Ghana as a starting point, this presentation aims to add vigour to the religion-state tensions in post-independence Africa. It demonstrates how the coexistence and competing claims of religious, legal, and political orders in contemporary Ghana give an ambivalent picture of the country’s secularity. The presentation aims to showcase that while a professed secular state, in the public domain, the “religious factor” continues to be vital for lawmaking and enforcement processes as well as political mobilisation, raising issues of human rights concerns. I will contend despite the many dissenting voices, the deployment of religious arguments to legislate homosexual activities in the public domain has neither discredited Ghana’s secular orientation nor emboldened its supposed religious foundation. Rather, it pinpoints a cardinal feature of the country’s moderate and strategic secular orientation. The presentation further argues that, in the Ghanaian public sphere, religion is not only a limiter, but also a promoter of secular ideals.