Yet another eventful year has come and gone for this here website thingy. In 2013 we saw nearly 28 million pageviews on just over 10,000 posts on which you folks left over a million comments.  As I mentioned in this post last year, news blogging is like a homework assignment that is never done, but is always due. Nevertheless, you …

Read the full filing. UPDATE: Via the Associated Press. In papers filed Tuesday with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the state asked her to overturn court decisions to let the marriages go forward. Sotomayor handles emergency requests from Utah and other Rocky Mountain states. She can act by herself or get the rest of the court involved. Nearly two-thirds of Utah’s 2.8 …

“Dear friends, I’m writing today to say thank you, and wish you a Happy New Year. Thank you to each and every one of you who came to committee hearings or town hall meetings, who sent emails, who made phone calls. Thank you for lending us your ideas and making your voices heard, for playing a part in shaping the …

“The truth is, the main reason I’m proposing this is that I just want people to relax. If they know they have their federal religious guarantees in writing, I hope they will just relax. Like Wayne Gretzky said, ‘A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.’ I …

Culled from my Spotify favorites playlist, here’s my annual roundup of the tracks that got the most play this year at Casa JMG. Some of them appeared here during the year, some did not. 1. John Grant – Pale Green Ghosts (Openly gay, openly HIV+, very Dead Can Dance.) 2. Boy George – King Of Everything (One of his loveliest …

“It isn’t enough for homosexuals to have their own offensive annual parades every June in every major city dedicated to celebrating deviance. And it wasn’t enough to ruin Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade for families with a live performance from a play that celebrates cross-dressing. No, it seems their goal is to ruin every public event for families by publicly celebrating …

Openly gay CNN host Don Lemon says it’s still very important for famous people to come out. He spoke of his own struggles coming out to people close to him, and then coming out publicly years later, saying he was fearful at how the news would be received by viewers and others. Lemon said he was “afraid of people like …

(Via JMG reader Scott)

Via the Royalist: Angela Lansbury has been created a Dame in the Queen’s New Year honors list for services to drama and charity. The news raises the intriguing possibility that the Queen is a fan of the TV series ‘Murder She Wrote’ with which Dame Angela, as we shall now have to get used to calling her, is synonymous. Angela …

Reuters reports on Pew Research’s latest survey: Although this percentage remained steady since 2009, the last time Pew asked the question, there was a growing partisan gap on whether humans evolved. “The gap is coming from the Republicans, where fewer are now saying that humans have evolved over time,” said Cary Funk, a Pew senior researcher who conducted the analysis. …

Details.

Got any resolutions?

The New York Daily News reports that one of the first acts by Mayor-elect Bill De Blasio will be to ban horse-drawn carriages, which have long been the target of animal rights activists. “We are going to get rid of the horse carriages. Period,” de Blasio said in response to a question at his press conference announcing his schools chancellor …

In what some see as Mayor Bloomberg’s final stab at the tobacco industry, New York City today filed a massive lawsuit against Fedex for shipping cigarettes to private homes. Monday’s lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan and seeks $52 million of civil fines and unpaid taxes from FedEx, which is based in Memphis, Tennessee. According to …

Via press release from ESPN: Former Florida quarterback and Heisman winner, Tim Tebow, has been hired as a college football analyst for the SEC Network launching in August 2014. Through a multi-year agreement, Tebow’s primary role will be as an analyst for SEC Nation, the network’s traveling pregame show that will originate from a different SEC campus each week beginning …

Gawker recaps: When Wolf Blitzer asked Moore tornado survivor Rebecca Vitsmun if she thanked the lord, many expected her to answer “yes.” Instead she replied “I’m actually an atheist.” “Saying ‘I’m an atheist’ in Oklahoma is like screaming ‘Jihad’ at airport security,” says Doug Stanhope in a clip from Charlie Brooker’s 2013 Wipe. “That took some nuts.” The blue comedy …

Clip recap: We end the year with big marriage wins in Utah and New Mexico. But those victories could still be overturned. We’ll have the latest on attempts to undo marriage in those states. We’ve also seen some major steps towards equality in Oregon, Ohio, Florida, Arkansas and Illinois. Plus, AFER has date for a hearing in its Virginia case.