Gay Marriage: Will Justices Follow Popular Opinion?

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The Supreme Court's announcement that it would hear two cases challenging laws prohibiting same-sex marriage has reinvigorated one of the most hotly contentious social debates in American history, a debate that has been fueled by a dramatic change in attitudes.


With some states taking significant steps towards legalizing gay marriage, the hearings come at a critical moment.


This week in Washington State, hundreds of same-sex couples lined up to collect marriage licenses after Gov. Christine Gregoire announced the passing of a voter-approved law legalizing gay marriage.


"For the past 20 years we've been saying just one more step. Just one more fight. Just one more law. But now we can stop saying 'Just one more.' This is it. We are here. We did it," Gregoire told a group of Referendum 74 supporters during the law's certification.


Washington is just the most recent of several states to pass legislation legalizing same-sex marriage, signifying a significant departure from previous thinking on the controversial subject.


READ: Court to Take Up Same-Sex Marriage


A study by the Pew Research Center on changing attitudes on gay marriage showed that in 2001 57 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, while 35 percent of Americans supported it.


The same poll shows that today opinions have greatly shifted to reflect slightly more support for same-sex marriage than opposition -- with 48 percent of Americans in favor and 43 percent opposed.


In fact, just two years ago, 48 percent of Americans opposed same-sex marriage while only 42 percent supported it -- indicating that opinions have changed dramatically in the last couple of years alone.






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It's hard to imagine that only 16 years ago, the fervent gay marriage debate led to the conception of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union solely held between a man and a woman.


While debating the Defense of Marriage Act in September 1996, former Sen. Robert Byrd said: "If same-sex marriage is accepted, then the announcement will be official: America will have said that children do not need a mother and a father. Two mothers or two fathers will be OK. It'll be just as good. This would be a catastrophe."


Even a few short years ago a newly-elected President Obama did not support the legalization of gay marriage. It wasn't until earlier this year, at the end of hiss first term and with the impending election in sight, that the president told ABC's Robin Roberts the he'd "been going through an evolution on this issue."


Obama went on to attribute his shift in stance to the influence of his daughters.


"You know, Malia and Sasha, they've got friends whose parents are same-sex couples. It wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated differently," he said. "That's the kind of thing that prompts -- a change in perspective."


Obama isn't the only one to experience an evolution in thinking on the matter of gay marriage. Attitudes towards same-sex marriage have shifted dramatically over the past decade across the board, particularly in the past few years.


Gone are the days when a majority of people opposed same-sex marriage; the days when gay politicians and supporters of same-sex marriage could not get elected.


Get more pure politics at ABCNews.com/Politics and a lighter take on the news at OTUSNews.com


Today, nine states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex unions -- a number likely considered inconceivable just a few short years ago. And yet, the same-sex marriage debate still begs for the answering of a question: Will this newfound public opinion, largely driven by young people, women and Democrats, have an effect on the Supreme Court's ultimate decision on the matter?


"I think (gay marriage is) just not a big deal for a lot of young people," Elizabeth Wydra of the Constitutional Accountability Center says. "The justices are human beings so they're not completely immune to public opinion. ... I think the real question for them is going to be do they want to be on the wrong side of history?"



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In Michigan, heart of organized labor, Republicans push to limit union power

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Republicans in Michigan are acting swiftly to adopt broad limits on the ability to organize workers, as the war over organized labor moves into the state that gave rise to modern industrial unions.


Unbowed by their party’s thumping at the polls nationally in last month, Republicans who control Michigan’s legislature approved measures in the lame-duck session this week that would make Michigan a “right to work” state, effectively banning unions there from requiring workers to pay labor dues.

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Philippine typhoon survivors 'loot' shops

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TAGUM, Philippines: Hungry survivors of a deadly Philippine typhoon looted shops and warehouses in a hard-hit town in a bid to stay alive amid stalled aid deliveries, a rescue official said.

Local officials monitored the desperate scenes in the early aftermath of Typhoon Bopha's onslaught in the isolated southern town of Cateel, Cedric Daep, a provincial public safety official, told AFP.

"The food aid took so long to arrive that the locals broke into whatever building left standing in search of something to eat," said Daep, a specialist sent to the south by the government to help rescue and relief operations.

Warehouses and grocery stores were broken into in Cateel, a coastal town near where the eye of the typhoon made landfall on Tuesday, Daep said.

Officials said damage to roads and bridges by floods and landslides trapped 150,000 people for three days in Cateel and the nearby towns of Baganga and Boston, where they said 97 percent of buildings were flattened or unroofed.

The typhoon killed more than 500 people and left hundreds of others missing across the south, rescue officials said.

A Philippine Navy vessel with 31 tonnes of emergency relief and 132 volunteer aid workers reached Baganga on Thursday, navy spokesman Omar Tonsay told AFP, saying he had not heard of the Cateel looting.

Daep, speaking in the city of Tagum, at the edge of the southern disaster zone, said the region suffered its last strong typhoon in 1922, and has little expertise in coping with them.

"You have to organise (pre-disaster) evacuation, relief distribution systems, and putting up temporary shelters... They were not prepared," he said.

Daep said the priority was to ensure a reliable supply of food, safe water, shelter and clothing to the displaced victims, which the national government said included more than 200,000 people who have lost their homes.

"We have been receiving reports of people getting sick because they had been drinking contaminated water," he said.

He urged local governments in the disaster areas to help their people instead of waiting for the national government to organise relief and rehabilitation.

"They should organise cash- or food-for-work programmes to build shelters for the displaced," Daep said.

- AFP/ck



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India misguided, paranoid over China: Guha

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MUMBAI: A good half-hour into the discussion on 'India, China and the World', historian Ramachandra Guha issued a disclaimer—all the three members on the panel had been to China only once. "We should learn their language, promote quality research, and have a panel on China driven by Chinese scholars," he said. And that was the general tenor of the debate—that the Indian attitude to China was influenced by a mix of ignorance, cautious optimism about partnerships and a whole lot of misguided paranoia. "Don't demonise the Chinese, please," Guha finally said in response to a question.

"China has existed in our imaginations," observed Sunil Khilnani, professor of politics and author of The Idea Of India. "There's been very little sustained engagement with the reality of China and very little of our own produced knowledge about China." It was after the events of 1962 ('war' in the popular imagination, 'skirmish' to the scholars participating in the discussion), explained Khilnani, that a miffed India "withdrew". It's the 50th anniversary of that exchange this year, and "what we haven't been able to do is learn from the defeat", observed Khilnani. Both could have benefited from greater engagement. "China has had a very clear focus on primary education and achieved high levels of literacy before its economic rise. It has also addressed the issue of land reform," said Khilnani. Guha added that China could learn from the "religious, cultural and linguistic pluralism" in India.

But China and India weren't always so out of sync with each other. Srinath Raghavan, a scholar of military history, got both Guha and Khilnani to talk about pre-1962 relations between the two when the picture was rosier. Tagore was interested in China and so was Gandhi. Both were very large countries with large populations and shared what Guha calls a "lack of cultural inferiority". "They were both," he continued, "also heavily dependent on peasant communities." Nehru was appreciative of China's will to modernize and industrialize and its adoption of technology to achieve those ends. In turn, Chinese politicians argued for Indian independence.

Things soured more, feel both Khilnani and Guha, after the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959. "He was welcomed here as a spiritual leader but the intensification of the conflict dates to the Dalai Lama's flight," said Guha. Both Guha and Khilnani argued that Nehru's decision to not react aggressively to China's occupation of Tibet was, in the long run, the right one and prevented further "militarization" of the region. An audience member wondered if that didn't make India "China's puppet". Guha disagreed. "If there's a Tibetan culture alive today," he said, "it's not because of Richard Gere. Don't believe in the hypocrisy of the Western countries. Will they give them land, employment, dignified refuge? The Tibetans is one of the few cases in which our record is honorable."

But the difference in levels of development and the lopsided trade relations between the two countries have only fuelled the suspicions many Indians seem to harbour about China. People were worried, said Guha, even about cricket balls made in China. Audience questions reflected those worries. A member asked about China's "strategy to conquer the world" and its likely impact on India. Guha cautioned against stereotypes; Khilnani explained, "History is littered with the debris of states that have tried to dominate the world. What we're doing may be more long-lasting."

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Plants Grow Fine Without Gravity

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When researchers sent plants to the International Space Station in 2010, the flora wasn't meant to be decorative. Instead, the seeds of these small, white flowers—called Arabidopsis thaliana—were the subject of an experiment to study how plant roots developed in a weightless environment.

Gravity is an important influence on root growth, but the scientists found that their space plants didn't need it to flourish. The research team from the University of Florida in Gainesville thinks this ability is related to a plant's inherent ability to orient itself as it grows. Seeds germinated on the International Space Station sprouted roots that behaved like they would on Earth—growing away from the seed to seek nutrients and water in exactly the same pattern observed with gravity. (Related: "Beyond Gravity.")

Since the flowers were orbiting some 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the Earth at the time, the NASA-funded experiment suggests that plants still retain an earthy instinct when they don't have gravity as a guide.

"The role of gravity in plant growth and development in terrestrial environments is well understood," said plant geneticist and study co-author Anna-Lisa Paul, with the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is less well understood is how plants respond when you remove gravity." (See a video about plant growth.)

The new study revealed that "features of plant growth we thought were a result of gravity acting on plant cells and organs do not actually require gravity," she added.

Paul and her collaborator Robert Ferl, a plant biologist at the University of Florida in Gainesville, monitored their plants from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida using images sent from the space station every six hours.

Root Growth

Grown on a nutrient-rich gel in clear petri plates, the space flowers showed familiar root growth patterns such as "skewing," where roots slant progressively as they branch out.

"When we saw the first pictures come back from orbit and saw that we had most of the skewing phenomenon we were quite surprised," Paul said.

Researchers have always thought that skewing was the result of gravity's effects on how the root tip interacts with the surfaces it encounters as it grows, she added. But Paul and Ferl suspect that in the absence of gravity, other cues take over that enable the plant to direct its roots away from the seed and light-seeking shoot. Those cues could include moisture, nutrients, and light avoidance.

"Bottom line is that although plants 'know' that they are in a novel environment, they ultimately do just fine," Paul said.

The finding further boosts the prospect of cultivating food plants in space and, eventually, on other planets.

"There's really no impediment to growing plants in microgravity, such as on a long-term mission to Mars, or in reduced-gravity environments such as in specialized greenhouses on Mars or the moon," Paul said. (Related: "Alien Trees Would Bloom Black on Worlds With Double Stars.")

The study findings appear in the latest issue of the journal BMC Plant Biology.


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Baby Gabriel's Mother Sentenced to Prison

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Elizabeth Johnson -- who at one point admitted to killing her son, the missing infant Gabriel Johnson, before saying she gave him away -- told a judge she "deserved the maximum" sentence, before receiving a prison term of 5.25 years, half of the max.


In October, Johnson, 26, was found guilty of custodial interference and unlawful imprisonment stemming from the disappearance of her 8-month-old son, last seen on Dec. 24, 2009. The baby's whereabouts remain unknown.


"I am brokenhearted over my son still being missing," said Johnson, wearing a striped prison jumpsuit. "I'm at a loss because I do deserve the max. What I have done is unconscionable. I would convict myself.


"I do deserve the maximum, I do," she said through tears. "[But it] wasn't how [the prosecution] made it out to be. It wasn't like that. That's all I have to say."


Judge Paul McMurdie said he wished he could design a sentence that would compel Johnson to disclose Gabriel's whereabouts, but could only "sentence her for the offenses [for which] she's been convicted."


Johnson, 26, will serve 5.25 years in an Arizona state prison, followed by four years of probation.










At today's sentencing hearing, prosecutor Angela Andrews called Johnson' actions "despicable," but said the state would drop its request to see Johnson serve out a maximum sentence if she would tell authorities where her son could be found.


Johnson, who has been in jail for the past three years, faced a maximum of 9.5 years in prison on the two convictions. In October, the jury did not reach a verdict on a third charge of kidnapping.


Before Gabriel's disappearance, Johnson had been embroiled in a custody battle with the baby's biological father, Logan McQueary. The couple differed on putting their infant son up for adoption. Johnson had wanted to, McQueary did not.


"I think Elizabeth should be held accountable for her actions, for making my son disappear," Johnson told the court. "She should stay in jail until Gabriel is found or be given the maximum sentence as possible."


While she was fighting with McQueary over custody of their son, Johnson left Tempe, Ariz., with Gabriel and traveled to San Antonio, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2009. Johnson failed to bring Gabriel back to visit with McQueary two days later, violating a court custody order.


Gabriel was last seen with his mother on Dec. 26, 2009. The following day, Johnson sent text messages to McQueary saying she had killed him. Johnson was recorded telling McQueary that she suffocated their son with a towel until he turned blue. She said she then put his body in a diaper bag and put the bag in the trash.


Later, Johnson told authorities she gave Gabriel to a couple she met in a park in San Antonio, though she has never named who she gave the child to.


ABC News' Alexis Shaw contributed to this report.



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Survey shows falling satisfaction among federal employees

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When he released a federal worker survey on the afternoon before Thanksgiving, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry forthrightly noted that “continued tight budgets and pay freezes” contributed to many lower ratings.


The report goes a bit further, suggesting “the downward trend of many of the survey items . . . suggest that the continued tight budgets, salary freezes and general public opinion of federal service are beginning to take a toll on even the most committed employees.”

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Indonesia anti-graft agency probes sports minister

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JAKARTA: Indonesia's anti-corruption agency has named the country's sports minister as a suspect in a multi-million-dollar graft case, in the latest scandal to hit the president's party ahead of the 2014 elections.

The Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK) asked authorities late Thursday to ban sports minister Andi Mallarangeng from travelling as it probes the construction of a sports centre built on the outskirts of the capital Jakarta.

The KPK said in a statement it was conducting an investigation into corruption "regarding the construction of the Hambalang sports facilities and infrastructure between 2010 and 2012, carried out by suspect Andi Alfian Mallarangeng".

The contracts to build the sports facility were worth 2.5 trillion rupiah ($261 million).

The KPK has named several members of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democratic Party as suspects in various cases in the recent years, threatening the ruling party's position ahead of mid-year elections in 2014.

The KPK this year prosecuted the party's former treasurer Muhammad Nazaruddin, who is now also implicated in the sports centre case.

- AFP/ck



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Tribal women wage war against IMFL

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SHIMLA: Tribal women in Lahaul-Spiti and Kinnaur district have waged a unique war to curb social inequality, especially during marriages and other social functions. In a bid to curb show of wealth, women have come up with unique idea of banning the use of English liquor and those defying ban are being imposed heavy penalty.

Liquor is an important part of tribal customs and social get together are incomplete if alcohol and mutton are not served to guests. Since ages, tribals in Kinnaur are brewing liquor locally known as "angoori" while in Lahaul-Spiti they make it from wheat. But with the coming of wealth locally brewed liquor was replaced by whisky and beer resulting into social inequality widening the gap between rich and poor.

Noted social activist of Kinnaur and chairperson of Kinnaur Mahila Kalyan Parishad Ratan Manjari said over the years serving English liquor and beer during marriages and other social functions had become a show of wealth and those not having money too were serving it and get burdened with debt. "Trend was wrong which needed to be stopped and now we have done it in many villages of Kinnaur," she said. Kinnaur Mahila Kalyan Parishad has 200 mahila mandals as its members.

Ratan Manjari said for 5-6 years, they have mobilized support of women in Kinnaur district to tell them how use of English liquor and beer during marriages is resulting in waste of money besides creating divide among rich and poor. "Today, we have succeeded in banning English liquor in social functions, especially in Kalpa, Sangla, Lippa and other areas of district," she said.

To ensure that people obey the decision, a provision of imposing fine has been made by women amicably. "We have decided to impose penalty of Rs 5,000 on people serving the English liquor and those consuming it," Manjari said. She said still a lot more is required to be done.

In Lahaul-Spiti district, Udaipur village is setting an example for others by observing complete ban on English liquor and beer during social gathering for last three years. "During marriages and other functions only locally made liquor is served. Those defying ban are punished by mahila mandal members," said Hemvati, Mahila Mandal member of Udaipur.

Hemvati said if a family in the village found serving English liquor and Beer despite ban, then Rs 10,000 fine is imposed, but if same offence is committed second time then the family is boycotted socially.

"Such decisions are in larger interest of society as seeing rich people serving liquor even poor were following the trend after borrowing money. In one wedding, people were usually spending Rs 50,000 to 1 lakh only on liquor, but now with ban enforced in many villages show of wealth has been curbed in the interest of poor," said Rigzin Samphel Hayerpa, Zila Parishad member from Kolang in Lahaul-Spiti.

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Space Pictures This Week: Lunar Gravity, Venusian Volcano

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