Living life tends to have a chilling effect on my ability to blog. I have at least two partially-finished posts that I’ve been meaning to complete and post, after I get all the Christmas gifts settled, and have lunch with this and that group of friends, and arrange to meet up with so-and-so when he’s up here for the holidays, and go out to this local artist’s studio (he was a really cool chap by the way), and go see the Nutcracker (mediocre), and once I start getting home at a reasonable time from work so that I don’t just plop down on the couch and watch the latest Netflix flick.* That in mind, I have asked a friend to keep me to a weekly schedule after the new year. No excuses.

But here are some year-end links for you, in spite of all that. Mostly it’s some of the cool and/or important stuff I’ve found over the year and shared out through my Google feed:

First up is the anti-gay hysteria going on in Uganda. Box Turtle has done a brilliant job of covering this story. (If you’re wondering where the title “Slouching toward Kampala” comes from, check out this poem by Yeats – classic, important bit of cultural English-language knowledge. You should know it.) Uganda is already a hotbed of anti-gay sentiment, and the fire was inflamed when some American ex-gay activists went over for a conference to proclaim that gays could be “cured” from homosexuality if they really wanted to be. Those activists have, of course, done a miserable job of distancing themselves from the draconian new legislation that was proposed a few months after their arrival, as also the international Anglican Church and many American pastors with ties to that country have had very mild rebukes. This legislation makes the typical anti-gay (and in this day and age, unexcusable) slur conflating homosexuality and pedophilia, and among other things it makes “repeat homosexual offenders” (e.g., those who have had sex more than once) and persons guilty of “aggrevated homosexuality” (among other things, HIV positive gay men, and remember this is in a country that is part and parcel of Africa’s severe – and largely heterosexual – AIDS crisis) liable for life imprisonment or death. Under this legislation, anyone who knows someone is gay and doesn’t report then to the police within 24 hours is liable for several years’ imprisonment. Oh yes, there is also a provision for extradition for these offenses committed in foreign countries. It is very likely that this legislation, or some form of it, will pass. This is a glimpse of what total minority persecution and anti-gay hysteria looks like. For a look from a gay man on the inside of Uganda, check out Gay Uganda - an excellent source of both inspiration and heartbreak.

On an aside, not a good year overall for gay marriage (but in Washington everything-but-marriage domestic partnerships passed by popular vote; YAY). This guy has great videos rebutting some of the absurd distortions put forth by conservative religious groups arguing against same-sex marriage. On religious freedom here, and he covers all the arguments I’ve heard on that front, and on ”bashings” here and religious misunderstandings of it - both videos are chock-full of information you ought to know if you want to argue for gay marriage. I highly recommend both.

Second is all the information about American-perpetrated torture that’s come out this year. Glenn Greenwald has, as always, been a great champion of human rights and provider of critical information in these cases: here is his post responding to and highlighting pieces of the Inspector General’s torture report, and here again on a British high court’s order to release information about British complicity in US torture (our government has purportedly sliced open a man’s testicles with a scalpel, you know, to protect us from The Terrorists). Sullivan posts on it here. And here is the disturbing 2004 report on Guantanamo detainees from the International Committee of Red Cross. I’ve watched with dismay as the discussion has shifted from whether the US tortures prisoners, to whether it’s okay that the US tortures prisoners, to asinine defenses of “moving forward” and why we shouldn’t prosecute anyone for flagrantly breaking the Geneva Conventions which this country’s legislature signed into law (and is therefore constitutionally the supreme law of the land), until eventually this discussion has moved altogether into obscurity. The ACLU has an interview video with British detainees released from Guantanamo; this video should be required viewing for all Americans. Even more depressing than all this is the uncritical acceptance of these practices by certain religious persons in this nation; what good is religion if it is not grounded in a deep sense of justice? But then again, I’ve come to decouple justice from religion, as is necessary for anyone witnessing the actions of some, but not all, devoutly religious persons. But I digress.

But while we’re on the topic of religious insanity, the Slacktivist as always continues to be a point of relief from evangelical insanity. For those of you who don’t know, Fred (the Slacktivist) is himself an evangelical Christian who on his blog routinely takes to task many of the absurd and even evil things propogated by those claiming his faith and the name of Christ. From evolution denial to his Left Behind series (some sort of mass internet therapy for those of us who grew up with the books and have been scarred), Fred is always a good read.

And now we come to the random links. Jason Kuznicki makes a convincing case that Athenian pederasty, as awful as it was, was probably less morally objectionable than Athenian marriage. Classically Liberal makes the case that sex offender laws more often capture consensual teenage sex than actual predators. XKCD captures my feelings about the odious Papyrus font. Liu Bolin, a Chinese artist, wins my award for best art I’ve seen this year. And if you like stunning photography, an interview parts one and two with Art Wolfe.

I leave you with a quote:

The question of how to spend my life, of what my life is for, is a question posed only to me, and I can no more delegate the responsibility for answering it than I can delegate the task of dying.

- Anthony T. Kronman from Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life

* Recently I’ve been getting into Mad Men. I hate Don Draper with a passion but it is an excellent show. Presently Terry Gilliam’s Brazil is sitting at home waiting for me.