Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni has described the international outcry over his country’s new law as “imperialist.” Most westerners, if they thought about him at all, would consider Museveni a nasty dictator. His views on homosexuality — “a deviation from normal” — sound archaic to our hyper-tolerant minds. But it’s worth considering that the Ugandan government’s position today is merely a harsher version of Joe Biden’s not so long ago. Perhaps he isn’t best placed to lecture Africans about sexual equality from the Oval Office.

What we probably can all agree on is the hypocrisy of an American government in threatening Uganda with sanctions and more over gay rights — at the same time as the White House still treats Saudi Arabia as a vital strategic ally. Homosexuality is a criminal offense in Saudi, punishable by public lashings and the death penalty. But Saudi Arabia is the world’s second-biggest oil producer and so it gets a pass. Uganda has little to offer the global markets in comparison. …

American grandstanding on gay rights will only annoy a lot of conservative Africans across a continent where Christianity still thrives and many Islamists regard America as “the Great Satan.” Everyone can see that America’s moralism on such matters is not universal but selective and performative. And the message is clear: if you have enough oil, you get to persecute homosexuals. If you don’t, you don’t.

[It’s not just the African dictators taking notice, and not just in regard to the US government. Catholic bishops in Africa have long decried the “colonialist” approach by Western governments and especially Western NGOs in distribution of aid, most of which comes with political strings attached. Unless these nations agree to allow abortions (particularly), the aid will not flow. When I covered the Synod on the Family at the Vatican, the African bishops and cardinals were particularly vocal about what they saw as Western efforts to undermine families and export immorality attached to supposedly charitable efforts. — Ed]