From one of the great albums of last year that I mentioned at the time of release but probably didn’t get around to listing when I was trying to sum up the year.

G’night.

Americans’ Role Seen in Uganda Anti-Gay Push

KAMPALA, Uganda — Last March, three American evangelical Christians, whose teachings about “curing” homosexuals have been widely discredited in the United States, arrived here in Uganda’s capital to give a series of talks.

The theme of the event, according to Stephen Langa, its Ugandan organizer, was “the gay agenda — that whole hidden and dark agenda” — and the threat homosexuals posed to Bible-based values and the traditional African family.

For three days, according to participants and audio recordings, thousands of Ugandans, including police officers, teachers and national politicians, listened raptly to the Americans, who were presented as experts on homosexuality. The visitors discussed how to make gay people straight, how gay men often sodomized teenage boys and how “the gay movement is an evil institution” whose goal is “to defeat the marriage-based society and replace it with a culture of sexual promiscuity.”

( tl;dr but interesting, I think )

OUT YONDER: Sick And Unseen In America is an excellent essay by Neil Shea, densely illuminated with photography by Andrew Cutraro, released in magazine form via POD operation MagCloud.

I’d read an article about this particular phenomenon last year, but Shea and Cutraro really bring it home in OUT YONDER: the plight of uninsured Americans trying to survive via the use of free healthcare clinics in rural Appalachia. It’s a sad and frightening read.

BECK: African-American is a bogus, PC, made-up term. I mean, that’s not a race. Your ancestry is from Africa and now you live in America. Ok so you were brought over — either your family was brought over through the slave trade or you were born here and your family emigrated here or whatever but that is not a race.

Gay Marriage Bill Defeated in New Jersey Senate

TRENTON, New Jersey (Reuters) - New Jersey's state Senate defeated a bill on Thursday that would have legalized same-sex marriage, a move that likely stalls the measure for several years.

The Senate, after an afternoon of debate, voted 20 to 14 against the bill. Backers had hoped to get it approved and signed into law before Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine, a supporter, leaves office on January 19.

Incoming Republican Governor Chris Christie, who defeated Corzine in November, had said he would veto the measure.

With failure of the bill in the Senate, the proposal now could lie dormant for years while Christie is in office.

Political observers have said Christie's victory made some lawmakers wary of supporting the controversial measure.

New Jersey has a same-sex civil union law, designed to give gay couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples. But advocates of gay marriage say civil unions are inadequate.

Iowa, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont have legalized same sex marriage. Another 40 states have specific laws banning it.

[T]he states most likely to “win” as a result of health care reform are Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah. All of these states have a relatively high number of uninsured and all are in the bottom half of states in terms of cost under both financing mechanisms. … Among the states most likely to “lose” are Delaware, Nebraska, and New Hampshire as well as the District of Columbia. Each of these states has a relatively lower-than-average proportion of uninsured residents, and each would fall in the “High Cost” category under either of the financing options. There are four states — Alabama, Indiana, Michigan, and Rhode Island — that while also “Low Benefit” are “Low Cost” as well.