Lesbian Pop Culture Reviews

The Whole 9 Yards: Year in Review

We associate the number nine with extremes: highs (cloud nine), lows (the ninth Psalm, predicting the coming of the Antichrist), good luck and bad. Considering the spectrum of events we lived through in 2010-2011—from the greatest victories to the worst tragedies—the number nine seems a particularly apt symbol for the past twelve months’ happenings. On the plus side, DADT was repealed; on the minus side, a near-apocalyptic disaster devastated Japan. Last year, we opened our Annual Year in Review with the crisis in Haiti, which proves again that life is fragile.

10. HE DIED FOR THEIR SINS

Ugandan LGBT activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death in January—and sadly, it came as no surprise. Last October, a Ugandan newspaper published a front-page photo of Kato and other targeted gays with the incendiary caption “Hang Them!” The country’s legislature is poised to pass a law subjecting openly gay citizens to jail or the death penalty, co-written by Ugandan politicians and American evangelicals, a coalition that many gay activists blame for Kato’s murder. Exodus International’s Don Schmierer, who helped draft the law, complained that he also received death threats: “I’m getting bludgeoned from one end to the other.” What a poor choice of words.

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