2009 will be over in a few days, and with it the first decade of this century (which had no name until recently, with media writers auditioning various nicknames for it; personally, I like "The Noughties").

As far as I'm concerned, the "Person of the Decade"--the single individual whose life had the greatest impact on U.S. civil liberties this decade--would have to have been George W. Bush. He was president for 8 of the 10 years, and presided over the bulk of what would become known as the War on Terror.

His policy agenda still defines U.S. civil liberties in both parties; where policymakers stand, they tend to stand in relation to the Bush legacy. This will change over the next few years, as Obama gets his sea legs and the Bush years sink into history. But for now, right now, the civil liberties policy debate still orbits the Bush administration.

That said, there are a lot of people who aren't George W. Bush who have influenced civil liberties over the past decade. I'm preparing features on some of these people now, but I'm asking you, dear readers: Who do you consider to be the most important civil liberties figures of the Noughties, and why? You can share your thoughts in the Comments field below.

Stephen A. of the Feministing community writes about antifeminist attitudes in pro-feminist men's groups. Excerpt:

The question I have is, how do we as men reach out to other male allies? Clearly, if someone is attending a conference or browsing websites about stopping street harassment they at least have a little interest in the subject. There is a lot of infighting that needs to be addressed and I don't feel we male allies have been addressing it.

This is a good question that I think can also be asked about straight allies on LGBT rights, white allies on racial justice issues, and anyone else who does activism dealing with identifiable groups with which s/he does not identify.

For my part, I don't have to deal with much male-ally infighting because I live in Mississippi, where the feminist/pro-feminist movement isn't really large enough to accommodate separate groups for allied men; we're mainstreamed into coeducational, women-led organizations like NOW, Planned Parenthood, the Mississippi Reproductive Justice Coalition, et. al. and work with women in these groups. There are some women-only groups, such as Sisters Increasing Positive Progression (SIPPI), but I've never seen a male ally group.

But my gut-level reaction, based on experience with human nature, is that whenever you create a group, that group tends to drift in the direction of acting in the interests of its most powerful members and/or the majority of members. This is because activism is basically selfish, and--this is key--being an ally doesn't remove that component. Allies aren't completely unselfish. We can't be; we're only human.

If you create a pro-feminist men's group, for example, then you may have a policy platform that focuses on women's rights, and literature that attempts to dismantle male violence and gender disparity--but, human nature being what it is, I'm betting the natural drift of the group among its most engaged members, e.g. the members who enjoy their work the most, will tend to favor the interests of the pro-feminist men who belong to the group, not the interests of the women who don't.

Personally, I'm active in the feminist movement in Mississippi not because I'm some swell guy who enjoys working against systems that unfairly benefit me, but because I enjoy the hell out of it. Many of my friends work in that movement; I understand the talking points, the policy, and the literature surrounding it; I have a history in it; I enjoy the work, and I particularly enjoy the work when we've accomplished something that feels meaningful, that feels like it might have changed our culture in some small way.

I think there's the perception that allies tend to participate in activist movements out of less selfish interests than members of the affected groups, and in my experience, that's not true at all. We're all spiritually fed by this stuff. Whites who gave their lives for black civil rights in this state, men who co-founded our feminist organizations, straights who take to the streets for LGBT rights--we're on the right side of history, but odds are good that we're still basically in it for us.

When we bear that in mind, the question of what we do when the "us" is made up entirely of allies, and not of members of the affected group, is clear: If we don't stay accountable to the real stakeholders in the women's movement--i.e., women--we're going to end up representing our own interests, and probably at their expense.

This isn't to say that there can't be a good, productive male ally movement; I'm not qualified to make that judgment. But I really, really don't see how there can be a genuinely pro-feminist male ally movement in isolation. We can't effectively represent women's interests without women's voices. So a practical way of addressing the problem, in a male allies' group, might be to integrate it at least a little at the leadership level so that men are still accountable to women, even if the men mainly keep to themselves.

I don't know; I don't have much experience with the pro-feminist men's movement. What say you, readers?

Related: History of Feminism in the United States

It sounds like Uganda will drop the death-penalty and life-imprisonment sentences that would have been imposed in the proposed anti-gay bill currently being considered by Uganda's legislature, but homosexuality remains a capital crime in Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, and Sharia regions of Nigeria.

These laws tend not to actually be enforced, as journalist Andrew Rice explains; their practical function is to lock the closet door by making a death threat against lesbians and gay men. They also serve an emblematic function. Then-governor George W. Bush famously said he would veto any proposed repeal of Texas' sodomy law, prior to Lawrence v. Texas, because he considered laws criminalizing gay sex to be "a symbolic gesture of traditional values."

Opponents of same-sex marriage in the United States make a similar, mostly symbolic distinction between granting same-sex couples some marriage rights with civil union legislation and actually granting equal marriage.

One of the questions I've heard--a lot--from U.S. and Canadian gay rights activists over the course of the past week is "What can we do?" And this is an extremely difficult question to ask of countries like Uganda, where there is very little that a Westerner can do when homosexuality itself is described by political and religious leaders as a Western import.

Step one--and I realize this sounds milquetoast--might be to just be more conscious of symbols, to pay more attention to what we all say, and what we mean by it. As long as most lesbians and gay men are to a greater or lesser extent closeted, for example, then the message this sends is that same-sex relationships are dirty, scandalous, shameful things--which is exactly the message that homophobes are working so hard to spread. If we in the West can be more open about same-sex relationships, if they can play a larger, more visible, more ubiquitous role in our media and music and culture, then we will help export the message of inclusion to media consumers around the world.

This won't be enough to solve the problem on its own--this effort must meet halfway with strong, indigenous gay rights movements in countries like Uganda, movements that legislation like the recent Ugandan bill was intended to crush, movements that require heroic and preternatural courage from its leaders. I see little that the rest of us can do other than make our objections heard, keep our own houses in order, and watch for specific opportunities to provide constructive help to these leaders, to these movements.

Dissatisfied with that strategy? So am I--but that's the political reality we seem to face. Opportunities to fight horror, at a distance and at no personal risk, are not especially plentiful. We can play a support role, but the real human rights activists--in Uganda, in Iran, in Saudi Arabia--are those who live in the crosshairs themselves.

This is not to say that we have no responsibility to speak out, and to call attention to the cowardice of those in a position of greater influence who are not willing to use that influence to protect human rights; our silence, and their silence, spreads the poison of homophobia, oppression, and violence. When Archbishop Rowan Williams of Canterbury objects to lesbian bishops but turns a blind eye to the potential of state-sponsored anti-gay violence, he both enables the malignant silence of Uganda's Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi and weakens the human rights movement in the West.

The Roman Catholic Church's representative, U.N. papal envoy Philip J. Bené, was at least willing to denounce the bill--giving Pope Benedict XVI a better record on this issue than his Anglican counterpart:

As stated during the debate of the General Assembly last year, the Holy See continues to oppose all grave violations of human rights against homosexual persons, such as the use of the death penalty, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. The Holy See also opposes all forms of violence and unjust discrimination against homosexual persons, including discriminatory penal legislation which undermines the inherent dignity of the human person.

As raised by some of the panelists today, the murder and abuse of homosexual persons are to be confronted on all levels, especially when such violence is perpetrated by the State. While the Holy See's position on the concepts of sexual orientation and gender identity remains well known, we continue to call on all States and individuals to respect the rights of all persons and to work to promote their inherent dignity and worth.

Also speaking out against the proposed bill is the Rev. Rick Warren, whose reputation in Uganda may exceed that of anyone else in the United States--and his intervention, which may help determine the bill's fate, came about after a sustained three-week campaign urging him to take a stand against anti-gay violence.

But no matter what Archbishop Williams does, or what Pope Benedict does, or what Rev. Warren does, the power to determine Ugandan policy ultimately rests with courageous Ugandans like John Nagenda and Val Kalende. Ugandans are the future of human rights activism in Uganda; there is no substitute for their work, for their movement.

Yesterday was World AIDS Day, and my mind is on Africa right now. Not because HIV-AIDS isn't a problem in the United States (it is), or growing in every demographic (it is), but because the scope of the problem in Africa is so terrifying. The life expectancy in Botswana, where 37% of the adult population is HIV-positive, has been reduced from 65 to 35; there are 73 million AIDS orphans in Africa, making up 7% of the African population; and the disease is spreading. HIV-AIDS in Africa is to the 21st century what the bubonic plague in Europe was to the 14th.

If you believe that every life is equally worthwhile, if you believe that we have an obligation to relieve human suffering--if you have an empathetic bone in your body, really--then this is our biggest enemy right now. Not al-Qaeda. Not even war.

Our commitment to fighting this enemy, though still small, increased substantially under the Bush administration. Its increase is, to my astonishment, slowing under Obama. I recognize that these are difficult economic times, but the global AIDS budget makes up such a small percentage of our federal spending that cutting this already small dollar amount, simply because there is less political pressure being put to bear on the issue, is inexcusable.

Bill Clinton called his failure to address the Rwandan genocide--in which 800,000 people were killed--the worst mistake of his presidency, despite the fact that U.S. intervention would have come with a very high financial and human cost. But the Obama administration is throwing away an opportunity to save untold millions of lives at very little relative cost, to improve the United States' reputation abroad (which will reduce terrorist recruitment), and to cement our country's place in history--at the cost of a fraction of one percent of the federal budget.

Addressing AIDS in Africa is our generation's Apollo mission, our preeminent global human rights crisis. Against that backdrop, all other foreign policy concerns, and all other human rights concerns, fade; no dictator could achieve killing, torture, and imprisonment on the scale that AIDS has achieved, and is poised to continue to achieve, in Africa.

This is no time for half-measures. Let President Obama know.

Related: Is Universal Health Care a Human Right?