On August 29 of this year, a CNN headline went viral on X (formerly Twitter): “Two men in Uganda are facing separate charges of ‘aggravated homosexuality,’ an offense punishable by death under the country’s controversial new anti-gay laws.” It was a headline designed to affirm what the mainstream press had been saying for some time – that Uganda was lethally targeting “LGBT” people.
The clarifying community note attached to the tweet, however, provided important context: “One man is accused of having a sexual relation with a disabled man, the other of a sexual act with a 12-year-old child. Both are charged with ‘aggravated homosexuality,’ defined as same-sex relations with someone who is HIV-positive, a child, an elderly person, or disabled.”
Regardless of your position on Uganda’s laws, consider the difference between the narrative pushed by CNN in their headline and the reality behind that headline. You were supposed to believe that two gay men were arrested for “being gay” and could face the death penalty as a result. The reality is that both men had actually been accused of the rape of vulnerable people, one of them a child. Again, you may think that Uganda’s laws are misguided and harsh – but CNN was deliberately deceiving people.
Some of you may recall that during the post-9/11 War on Terror, libertarian Congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul was frequently savaged for talking about “blowback” – the idea that American foreign policy often triggered an unwelcome response. Something similar appears to be happening with the aggressive neo-colonial push by many Western countries – Biden’s State Department most prominently – to push the LGBT agenda and abortion overseas. While some countries are buckling, many others are taking the opposite approach.
A Washington Post editorial in April, for example, noted that Africa appears to be moving away from the West on matters of sexuality: “Of the 64 or so countries that still criminalize same-sex relationships, at least half — at least 32 by most counts — are in Africa. While generally the world is moving toward more acceptance on LGBT rights, Africa forms a near-unanimous block of intolerance. A core group of African states nearly derailed the appointment and renewal of the United Nations Human Rights Council’s independent expert on sexual orientation and gender identity.”
In fact, it seems clear that the more the West pushes this agenda – accompanied, of course, by images of confused men in dresses and increasingly brazen decadence being beamed around the world on TV and the internet – the more blowback it receives in some quarters. Plenty of the West’s geopolitical foes have been happily making hay by highlighting the pervasive moral corruption that so occupies our elites, especially as Western countries have made pushing this moral corruption a centerpiece of foreign policy (who can forget the LGBT flag on the U.S. embassy in Kabul just before the Taliban took over?).
And indeed, the West is willing to make geopolitical sacrifices in defense of the LGBT agenda – at least, when they think their bullying will pay off. They don’t make demands of Saudi Arabia, or China, or the Palestinian Authority, for that matter. They put pressure on African countries because they presume that those countries will buckle and change their laws. But Uganda, it turns out, has instead decided to turn to Communist China, with Reuters reporting that they are preparing to borrow $150 million from China’s Export Import Bank.
Why? From Reuters: “The move underscores the East African country’s increasing reliance for credit on Chinese lenders after the World Bank halted all new lending to Uganda earlier this year in protest at a new anti-homosexuality law…The World Bank, traditionally Uganda’s biggest development lender, halted loans to Uganda after President Yoweri Museveni signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act which hands out tough sentences including death for a range homosexual activities.” But instead of changing their laws, Uganda changed their partners. They are also negotiating with the Chinese for a loan to finance the construction of an oil pipeline to bring crude to international markets.
Opponents of Uganda’s law will likely say that despite the predictability of this outcome, taking a moral stand was “worth it.” But the reality is that Western countries still regularly do business with nations that have objectively brutal laws. Saudi Arabia subjects convicted homosexuals to punishments of up to 500 lashes and imprisonment. China runs concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims. Qatar hands out prison sentences for homosexuality. The list goes on. Western foreign policy on this is consistently inconsistent – poor nations that can be bullied, are; more powerful countries that are needed as financial partners, aren’t.
But as it turns out, if the West decided to reject African countries for their laws, they can always turn to other nations – like Communist China. The West’s selective position on LGBT issues is strengthening our geopolitical foes. Call it rainbow blowback.
