> I sort of agree, but both should occur. Letting transgressions slide because economic progress is made should not occur.
That assumes that these things are uncorrelated, and I don’t think you can make that assumption without proof. For example, Singapore is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society with a delicate balance between Chinese (Confucian), Malays (Muslim), and Indians (Hindu). This is a mix that in many countries could devolve into perpetual ethnic conflict. Indeed, Singapore separated from Malaysia due to conflict between the Chinese and the Malay.
Part of that grand bargain is that the culture of government is Anglo and Confucian, but the government otherwise avoids intruding on the culture of the other two groups. Homosexuality is simply not accepted in Islam and among Indians. So a push to legalize it would be seen as an attack by westernized English-speaking Chinese upon the two other cultural groups.
Lee Kuan Yew was, in fact, extremely westernized (he spoke English as his first language), and opposed the law against homosexuality. But he was not about to upset social stability and unity in the country over that issue: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-homosexuality-i...
In America, we take social stability for granted. Imposing social change without broad public consensus creates social strife and more than a little dysfunction even in America. In a developing country, such conflict could be fatal. The calculus of individual welfare versus collective welfare is simply different in a developing country. Singapore’s infant mortality dropped from 35 per 1,000 to 2.5 per 1,000 from 1960 to 2000. Anything that sets back economic development, no matter how well intentioned the goal, means literally tens of thousands of dead children. That’s the cold hard reality people in wealthy countries don’t have to deal with.