SUMMARY: According to the New York Times, the Trump administration is considering a proposal that would establish the definition of gender as a “biological,” fixed quality based on the sex the person was assigned at birth. Critics say that such a move to would eliminate transgender identities in the workplace. William Brangham examines the issue with Sharon McGowan of Lambda Legal.
SUMMARY: More than 18 million Americans live in “extreme poverty,” according to a report from the United Nations, which ranked poverty in the U.S. alongside some of the poorest areas in the world. The UN Special Rapporteur for Extreme Poverty paid a visit to the U.S. last year, drawing worldwide attention to his findings. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Simon Ostrovsky followed in his footsteps to report from Lowndes County, Alabama. This is part of an ongoing series of reports called “Chasing the Dream,” which reports on poverty and opportunity in America, and is supported in part by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
SUMMARY: Humanitarian crises like those in Syria's Aleppo sometimes make headlines. But how do we identify such atrocities when they are occurring thousands of miles away? A new program at UC Berkeley is training students to leverage social media, geolocation and other high-tech tools to document human rights abuses, and their findings have been brought to the UN. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): As we near the gruesome sixth anniversary of the war in Syria, daily documents of the carnage there now flood the Internet. Photos and videos posted by both civilians and combatants catalog the shocking depths of human cruelty and possible war crimes.
Now human rights investigators are increasingly turning to the Internet to track what's happening, not only in Syria, but in other conflict zones.
As part of our Breakthroughs coverage of invention and innovation, special correspondent Cat Wise reports on a new university program training students to become human rights investigators in the digital age.
And a warning: This story contains some disturbing images.
CAT WISE (NewsHour): For decades, human rights investigators have relied on tools like shovels and backhoes to uncover mass graves and mass atrocities in places like Bosnia, Iraq, and Rwanda. But in today's smartphone-filled world, videos and images of people killed or suffering thousands of miles away take only a couple of clicks to find on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter.
The front lines of human rights work have shifted in the digital age, and a new generation of investigators is beginning to employ high-tech tools.
STUDENT: We can probably screen-shot that.
STUDENT: Yes.
STUDENT: And reverse-image it.
STUDENT: Yes.
STUDENT: And we should look up the name of that pharmacy.
STUDENT: Can anyone translate that?
CAT WISE: These students are part of the recently launched Human Rights Investigations Lab at the University of California, Berkeley's Human Rights Center.
The university and partner organization Amnesty International are training the students to verify videos and other publicly available social media content coming out of areas like Syria, where human rights violations have been occurring.
For the first time, students are using open source investigation methods used previously by journalists and human rights professionals.
YOUSTINA YOUSSEF, Student: Oh, those are uniforms.
CAT WISE: Youstina Youssef is a 20-year-old political science major in the program. She's become a highly skilled digital detective. And her native language, Arabic, also comes in handy. Youssef grew up in Cairo, Egypt. She and her family are Coptic Christians, a religious minority in Egypt. They came to the U.S. in 2010 shortly before the revolution began.
Some Christian groups have no problem protecting people from crimes driven by racial or religious hatred. They just draw the line at sexual orientation.
Last year, lawmakers in South Carolina introduced legislation that would have increased the standard penalties for anyone who assaults, intimidates or threatens another individual if they did so because of the victim's “race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, or sexual orientation.”
Drafted by Democratic legislators after white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine African-American parishioners at a church in Charleston, the bill never even came up for a vote. It was a familiar fate. In recent years, at least a half-dozen other hate crimes proposals have died in the South Carolina statehouse.
Much the same story played out in Indiana, where Republican state Sen. Susan Glick authored similar legislation in 2016; Glick's bill would have increased time behind bars for those convicted of harming or intimidating someone if the assailant's motivation was driven by the victim's gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion or immigration status.
The legislation passed in the Senate by a vote of 34-16 but died in the House without so much as a hearing.
Since the 1980s, nearly every state in the union has enacted some sort of hate crimes law, as have Washington, D.C., and the federal government. While the laws vary from state to state, they generally bolster penalties for those who commit crimes — assault, vandalism, credible threats of physical violence, among others — because of some sort of bias against the victim.
South Carolina and Indiana are among a small handful of states that have failed to pass such laws. Wyoming, Arkansas and Georgia are the other hold-outs.
Much of the opposition to creating hate-crime legislation in these states has come from well-organized groups of Christian fundamentalists who on religious grounds disapprove of any sort of legal protections for gays, lesbians and transgender people. For these critics, the primary concern is legal language stepping up punishment for crimes motivated by contempt for the LGBT populace, measures they view as a small but dangerous part of a broader “homosexual agenda.”
One of the Christian groups is the Family Research Council. Contacted by ProPublica, the FRC's national office directed questions about hate crimes to Ryan McCann, an Indiana activist and lobbyist who works with the organization.
McCann views hate crimes laws as a sort of Trojan Horse: If Indiana adopts such a law, McCann said, LGBT advocates will use the precedent to argue for further legal safeguards, including anti-discrimination statutes, which he opposes.
Christian conservatives such as McCann have become potent activists against hate-crime legislation — lobbying, organizing their followers to petition statehouse lawmakers, and providing many of the key arguments against the laws.
“Homophobia and resistance to providing protections for LGBT people obviously play a role in the push back,” said Robin Maril, associate legal director for Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT advocacy organization.
Statehouse experts are quick to point out that Christian conservatives aren't the only people who can be hostile to hate crimes laws.
Jeannine Bell, a law professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, said some legislators in that state believe the laws will create an inequitable justice system that “serves particular groups and not others.” (Bell, who has studied the laws, disagrees: “That is a misunderstanding. Everyone has a race.”)
Lynne Bowman of Human Rights Campaign noted that, in general, Republican-controlled legislatures have not been supportive of hate crimes bills regardless of the language.
The range of concerns can include worries about limiting free speech or doubts that police and prosecutors can truly know a perpetrator's state of mind or motivations at any given moment. There have even been some expressions of misgiving among civil rights advocates that the legal hurdles created by hate-crime laws — establishing with certainty, for instance, someone's specific motivations — can be counter-productive.
Decades ago, in a landmark 1993 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court examined the fundamental fairness of hate-crime legislation. The court held that carefully crafted hate crimes laws do not infringe on the free exercise of speech, a finding that resolved the major constitutional questions on the matter. The case centered on a racially motivated incident in Wisconsin in which an African-American man assaulted a white teen, leaving the victim in a coma.
In the five states without hate-crime laws, however, there is little question that Christian activists have had an impact.
Bowman, a senior field director with Human Rights Campaign, said “homophobia” gives lawmakers “an easy excuse to stand up against these bills.”
For the past two decades, much of the resistance to hate crimes legislation has been orchestrated by a trio of intertwined conservative Christian groups.
The oldest and most prominent is Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based ministry founded by James Dobson. The sprawling organization, which produces a vast array of media on biblical topics and funds anti-abortion counseling centers for pregnant women, operated on a budget of nearly $90 million in 2013, the last year for which full tax records are available.
Focus on the Family portrays hate crimes laws as part of a plot to marginalize Christians and ban them “from the public arena.”
Dobson's ministry helped to spawn the Alliance Defending Freedom, a network of fundamentalist Christian lawyers who have argued that the laws infringe on religion while “creating additional legal protections for those engaged in homosexual behavior that are not available to everyone else.”
But it is the FRC, a third offshoot based in Washington, D.C., that has emerged as perhaps the most effective foe of hate crimes legislation.
When Congress took up the issue in 1999, an FRC leader told the Senate Judiciary Committee that revising the federal code to cover hate crimes could lead to the prosecution of “people who merely oppose homosexual activism.” Ten years later, as Congress debated the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the FRC decried the act as a “thought crimes” bill.
Since then, the “thought crime” claim has become a common talking point in conservative Christian circles and the FRC's regional chapters have sought to halt hate crimes legislation at the state level.
In 2007, the FRC chapter in Arkansas urged lawmakers there to vote against hate crimes legislation authored by a veteran Democratic legislator. The bill failed. In a blog post, chapter leader Jerry Cox proudly touted the group's accomplishments, saying it had spent years fighting “to make sure Arkansas' civil rights and hate-crimes laws are not used to promote a homosexual agenda.”
McCann of the FRC is straightforwardly explicit about the group's thinking.
“The gay-rights groups and the folks on the left only want to get the terms ‘sexual orientation' and ‘gender identity' into the law,” said McCann. “Unfortunately, that's all they care about — their agenda.”
In Indiana, groups affiliated with the FRC have enjoyed great success in killing hate crimes bills over the past decade. The Republican Party currently enjoys a super-majority in the state, controlling both legislative chambers and the governor's office. But “even under Democrat rule these hate crimes bills didn't get a hearing,” said McCann, who helps to lead the Indiana Family Institute, a group associated with the FRC and Focus on the Family.
Currently McCann is pushing legislators to stop five different hate crimes bills pending in the statehouse.
Though the FRC describes its mission as the advancement of “faith, family and freedom in public policy,” critics take a very different view: The Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed it an anti-gay “hate group.”
The FRC has vigorously denied the characterization. The allegations are “an attempt to discredit FRC's work and cut us out of public policy debates and media coverage over homosexuality and same-sex ‘marriage,'” the organization said in a 2010 statement.
The FRC has cultivated powerful allies, some of them in the White House. As Wired recently reported, both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence appeared at the organization's “Values Voter Summit,” while a range of current or pending administration officials — Reince Priebus, Mike Pompeo, Tom Price, Jeff Sessions — have all spoken at FRC events. Ed Prince, the father of Betsy DeVos, provided millions of dollars in funding to the FRC in the group's early days. DeVos, a Michigan billionaire, has been tapped by the Trump administration to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education.
__________________________________________________
While 45 states have enacted hate crimes laws, the statutes vary dramatically around the country. In 15 of those states, the laws do not cover gays and lesbians; in 28 they don't cover gender identity or transgender individuals.
In Georgia, state Sen. Vincent Fort, a Democrat, said he has sponsored at least five bills that have been defeated largely because they covered sexual orientation. “Some people have said, ‘If you don't include gay people, it might pass,'” he recalled. Still, he insists he'll never support “any bill that excludes gay people. I'm not going to have anything to do with a hate crimes law that, in effect, is discriminatory. Wouldn't that be ironic?”
Wendell Gilliard of South Carolina tells a similar tale. A Democrat from Charleston, Gilliard has introduced “four or five hate crimes bills” in the state House of Representatives — and all of them have come to nothing. The lawmaker, who is African-American, said he's been barraged with angry emails and phone calls about his bills — not about race but from people “quoting biblical verses about homosexuality.”
Opponents of the bills under consideration in Indiana claim the legislation, if passed, could be used to prosecute preachers who portray homosexuality as a sin. “Let's pray that silencing speech is not the next step in the ‘gay' agenda that the media embraces and pushes in the statehouse,” wrote Micah Clarke, an Indiana lobbyist and leader of an FRC chapter, in a newsletter sent to his group's members.
Clarke declined to be interviewed.
“There are gay-rights activists all over the country who are trying to silence those who don't agree with them,” said McCann, the Indiana lobbyist. As far as he's concerned, the bills provide special treatment to members of “favored political classes” and are likely to muzzle fundamentalist Christians.
“Those are ‘alternative facts,'” said one clearly frustrated lawmaker, Greg Taylor, a Democrat from Indianapolis who has authored two hate crimes bills currently pending in the state Senate. “It's mind-boggling.”
Robin Maril of Human Rights Campaign describes the rhetoric coming from her political foes in Indiana as “irresponsible” fear-mongering.
“It's absolutely not true. But it sounds scary and it plays into people's fears,” Maril told us. “None of this legislation would ever impede an individual's ability to speak out. ... We are not policing ministers' ability to give sermons.”
SUMMARY: Founded in 2011, South Sudan is the world's newest country; but for much of its statehood, it has been engulfed in civil war. The violence has killed tens of thousands and displaced more than two million people. A report released on Monday by rights group The Sentry accuses South Sudanese political leaders of making a fortune off the conflict. The NewsHour's P.J. Tobia reports.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): South Sudan is the world's newest country, gaining independence from Sudan in 2011.
But, two years later, civil war broke out in the small East African nation. Though a peace agreement was signed in 2015, sporadic fighting continues. Millions have been displaced, while rival leaders fight for power and the country's oil and mineral wealth.
A two-year-long investigation into those leaders and their allies revealed billions have been looted from the country.
NewsHour producer P.J. Tobia has our story
And a warning: Some viewers may find some of the imagery disturbing.
P.J. TOBIA, NewsHour producer: Small, poor and dangerous, the U.N. has called South Sudan one of the most horrendous human rights situations in the world.
Fighters loyal to the president, Salva Kiir, have been battling those backing former Vice President Riek Machar for most of the last four years. Caught in the crossfire are Sudan's impoverished civilians. More than two million South Sudanese have been displaced by the fighting. Tens of thousands have been killed.
The U.N. found that, in just six months last year, 1,300 women were raped by fighters in one South Sudanese state alone. A report released today by The Sentry, a rights group in Washington, accuses the leaders who've orchestrated this brutality of making billions off the conflict. Actor George Clooney wrote the foreword to the report. “Hotel Rwanda” star Don Cheadle also works with The Sentry. Both were at the National Press Club this morning to talk about the investigation.
GEORGE CLOONEY, Co-Founder, “The Sentry”: This is pretty explosive stuff. We're talking about the president and the ousted vice president, along with all of their generals, that we're able to prove without any question that not only are they committing these crimes which they have already been accused of, but that they're profiting off of it.
P.J. TOBIA: The report outlines how South Sudan's political leaders, generals and their families have used the chaos of war to generate vast sums of wealth. They have built mansions across the world, from Uganda and Kenya to Australia.
That young woman flashing the peace sign from the sunroof of a BMW? She's the daughter of a former general, a former general whose state salary was never more than 45,000 U.S. dollars.
This man is the stepson of another South Sudanese general. He calls himself the young tycoon. His Facebook photos show a life of privilege unimaginable to most South Sudanese. Here, he narrates a tour of a presidential suite at a luxury hotel in Las Vegas.
JOHN PRENDERGAST, Enough Project: So, it's like a mafia in some ways. A mafia has taken over the state.
P.J. TOBIA: John Prendergast is the director of the Enough Project, a rights group that oversees The Sentry group.
JOHN PRENDERGAST: The mafia we see in the movies, that is shooting a few people. In South Sudan, tens of thousands of people have died in this war, with horrific atrocities, mass rape, child soldier recruitment, all the worst of the worst of the human rights abuses that we hear about globally. And this is how they stay in power.
SUMMARY: In Istanbul, thousands of supporters of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan went out to the streets, demanding retribution for those responsible for the coup over the weekend. Meanwhile, even more Turkish civil servants were detained or suspended from their jobs. Special correspondent Marcia Biggs talks to Hari Sreenivasan about the crackdown.
HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour): President Obama spoke by phone today with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The U.S. Justice and State Departments are reviewing Turkey's extradition request for Fethullah Gulen, the man the country says is responsible for the attempted coup last week.
And in its aftermath, the crackdown has only intensified, with thousands more civil servants suspended from their jobs today, in addition to the thousands already under detention.
For more, we're joined now from Istanbul by special correspondent Marcia Biggs.
Marcia, you're standing in front what looks like, what — is this a pro-Erdogan rally?
MARCIA BIGGS, special correspondent: Indeed, Hari.
This is the largest protest of the last five days. The first night, as you will remember, on Friday night, when the coup was attempted, President Erdogan called on his people to come down to the streets to save democracy, as he said, to protect him, to protect the government, and this is the fifth day.
People have come down in droves every single day. And this is by far the largest. I would say maybe 3,000 people are here tonight. The mood is one of nationalism, the Turkish flags, a lot of saving the fatherland.
What is very interesting is that Erdogan sent messages, text messages to his people, to the citizens of Turkey today, saying, please come down to the streets, as he has every day, to save the fatherland, to save democracy. And out they have come.
Public transportation has been free every day. Indeed, I took the ferry and I took a tram today, paid no money, and that is to encourage people to come down into the streets.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Tell me about the impact. Is there an impact that you can feel, though, the people that you talk to can feel about all these detentions and firings?
MARCIA BIGGS: The crackdown over the last couple of days has been brutal, as you mentioned, 30,000 suspensions of various ministries, police and education.
That's the people who work in the prime minister's office, judges, prosecutors, 15,000, as you mentioned, members of the Education Ministry; 1,500 deans were asked to resign, and that's in addition to the 1,000 civilians that were arrested and the 6,000 soldiers that were arrested.
That's 50,000 people in this country that have been affected by this crackdown, whether it's being fired, whether it's being asked to resign, whether it's being detained. It's incredible.
SUMMARY: The failed coup attempt in Turkey has won that nation’s president extraordinary power, in a three-month state of emergency, to impose laws by fiat. Critics fear he will chip away at Turkey's secular constitution. Hari Sreenivasan talks with special correspondent Marcia Biggs; and Federica Mogherini, a High Representative/Vice President of the European Union.
SUMMARY: Christopher Sabatini, a professor at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, joins Alison Stewart to discuss President Obama's historic visit to Cuba and the new era of U.S.-Cuba relations.
ALISON STEWART (NewsHour): Wheels down in Havana for Air Force One, as Barack Obama becomes the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba since Calvin Coolidge almost 90 years ago. It was raining as the first family got off the plane, to be greeted by Cuba’s foreign minister.
While still on the plane, President Obama tweeted: “Que bola, Cuba?”, or “What’s up, Cuba” in Spanish.
The President will spend a busy two days on the communist-ruled island nation, which has been preparing for his visit.
Only eight months after the flag was raised at the reopened U.S. Embassy in Cuba, for the first time in more than half-a-century, the streets of Havana are decorated with American flags and images of President Obama.
The President and the first family are beginning their Cuban visit with a walking tour of historic Old Havana tonight. Mr. Obama will meet tomorrow with Cuban President Raul Castro and attend a state dinner. The President has no plans to meet with former President and revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, older brother of the current president.
But he does intend to spend time on Tuesday with critics of Castro’s government, many of whom have faced arrests for their outspoken opposition.
The White House would not disclose which dissidents Mr. Obama will see, but insists the list is not negotiable.
JOSH EARNEST, White House Press Secretary: But I can tell you that the President is going to move forward and host meetings and have a conversation about human rights with the people that he chooses to meet with.
ALISON STEWART: This afternoon in Havana, police arrested dozens of anti-government dissidents from the so-called Ladies in White group. The President will also deliver a speech at the National Theatre of Cuba, where he plans to lay out his vision for how the two countries can work together.
He will also catch a baseball game between Cuba’s national team and the Major League Tampa Bay Rays. And in a video released online by the White House yesterday, the President joked with Cuba’s most famous comedian, Luis Silva, who often satirizes the failings of the Cuban government and economic system.
Earlier, I spoke with Christopher Sabatini, a professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, about this new era in U.S.-Cuba relations.
SUMMARY: Today the Supreme Court tackled a highly anticipated and historic case that could set the definition of marriage in the U.S. The justices heard arguments on whether all states must allow same-sex marriage, and if not, whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal joins Judy Woodruff to discuss what happened in court.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): It was a historic day at the Supreme Court, at stake, the definition of marriage.
Justices split the issue into two questions: Must every state permit same-sex marriage? And, if not, do states have to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere?
Protesters from both sides of the debate crowded outside the court building in Washington this morning.
Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal was there and she joins us now.
MARCIA COYLE, The National Law Journal: Hi, Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Marcia, big day at the court. Knowing that, what is it, 36 of the states…
MARCIA COYLE: Plus the District of Columbia.
JUDY WOODRUFF: … already declare same-sex marriage legal, what were the petitioners today asking the court to decide?
MARCIA COYLE: Well, basically, they’re laying claim to the 14th Amendment’s guarantees of equal protection and due process of law.
They’re saying that the court has recognized that there is a fundamental right to marry, and under the 14th Amendment, they have been — they deserve to be part and to participate in that fundamental right.
The states that still do ban same-sex marriage, they claim, are excluding them from that fundamental right to marry. It was a packed courtroom, Judy, and the arguments were fast-paced and intense. And I hope anybody who is interested will listen to the full audio and read the transcript.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): How we choose to deal with the end of life and the decisions patients and families face are difficult subjects that are often hard to discuss. But there are moments when they capture headlines and spark a national conversation.
We have recently heard from a number of voices grappling with these tough questions.
Tonight, Jeffrey Brown looks at a high-profile case in the Northwest.
BRITTANY MAYNARD: I can’t even tell you the amount of relief that it provides me to know that I don’t have to die the way that it’s been described to me that my brain tumor would take me on its own.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Brittany Maynard’s video has thrust the issue of end of life decisions back into the national spotlight.
The 29-year-old has terminal brain cancer, and, last spring, doctors gave her six months to live. Instead, she’s decided to die on her own terms, November 1.
BRITTANY MAYNARD: I hope to enjoy however many days I have left.
JEFFREY BROWN: And her online video has been viewed more than seven million times since last week.
BRITTANY MAYNARD: I will die upstairs in my bedroom that I share with my husband, with my mother and my husband by my side, and pass peacefully with some music that I like in the background.
JEFFREY BROWN: Maynard and her husband moved from California to Oregon to utilize the state’s death with dignity law. It allows her to take lethal medication prescribed by a doctor.
The Oregon law, which calls this aid in dying, has been around since 1997, and since then, more than 750 people have used it to end their lives. All told, only Oregon, Washington and Vermont have laws allowing the practice that’s sometimes referred to as doctor-assisted suicide.
Court decisions in Montana and New Mexico have also authorized it, but those rulings have not yet been codified into law. The nonprofit group that posted Maynard’s video, Compassion & Choices, is working to expand the option of death with dignity in more states.
Maynard’s husband and other relatives also appear on the video supporting that right.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): As we just heard, despite their emerging economic power, some countries in Africa still lag behind on human rights issues.
Many who follow developments on the continent are hoping that this week’s summit will be an opportunity to press for change beyond trade.
One of them is Nicole Lee. She’s a human rights attorney and former head of the U.S.-based policy organization TransAfrica. And she is with us now.
Thank you for being here.
NICOLE LEE, Immediate Past President, TransAfrica: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Nicole Lee, when you look at this summit, what do you think could come of it?
NICOLE LEE: Obviously, we know by definition this is really an opportunity for African leaders to get together with U.S. leaders and talk about investment in business.
What has also happened — and I’m not sure that the administration was — really understood that this was going to happen, but civil society from the continent of African also got on those planes, came over and want their voices to be heard as well. They want to be heard on the issue of good jobs.
So does investment mean there’s going to be good jobs? Does investment mean there is also going to be human rights? And so while we have the official meeting, there is also a lot of side meetings going on as well. And in those side meetings, they’re really talking about the preeminence or the need, if you will, for the preeminence of human rights at the table as well.
HARI SREENIVASAN (Newshour): Now a look at some of the larger issues raised in the ongoing debate over the Affordable Care Act, questions of how deeply a government should involve itself in the personal welfare of its citizens, of individual rights and collective responsibilities, even whether the law's troubled rollout might be seen as a challenge to the viability of the liberal philosophy at its core.
The latest major setback came yesterday, when the Obama administration announced a one-year delay in launching the federal Web site for small businesses to enroll their employees with insurers.
Jeffrey Brown gets two views on these bigger issues at stake.
JEFFREY BROWN (Newshour): And for that, we're joined by Jacob Hacker, director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. He worked on the broad blueprint of the health care law and has written a number of books about social policy in the U.S. And Avik Roy is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and author of the new book "How Medicaid Fails the Poor." He served as Mitt Romney's health care adviser during the 2012 presidential campaign.
SUMMARY: The Supreme Court ruled against trying foreign human rights cases in U.S. courts. The justices decided that a 1789 tort statute enacted by the first Congress didn't apply to conduct outside of the U.S. Gwen Ifill talks to National Law Journal's Marcia Coyle about why the court's ruling is a huge blow for human rights activists.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): Five men accused of the brutal gang rape of a university student for hours on a bus in India were charged today. This incident has sparked massive protests.
We begin with this report by Geraint Vincent of Independent Television News.
GERAINT VINCENT: The judicial process has begun in Delhi, but even for the professionals, it's not moving quickly enough. While lawyers here call for the courts to better protect India's women, the father of one murdered woman whose anonymity must still be protected called for her killers to be put to death.
WOMAN (through translator): Laws are made by the government, but all I ask is that the law be as tough as it can be. The death penalty is compulsory for a crime so great. The assailants must be hanged. The courts must give these men the death penalty.
GERAINT VINCENT: In a country of more than a billion people, there are dozens of news channels delivering constant coverage of the case of a gang of men who lured a young couple onto a bus with the promise that they would take them home.
According to charges filed today, the men beat them both and then subjected the 23-year-old woman to a sex attack so brutal, she died of her injuries two weeks later. The assault lasted for about an hour, and it took place behind the closed curtains of the bus as it made its way around the streets of South Delhi.
When the gang had finished, they dumped the couple by the side of this road. And police reports say that they tried to finish the woman off here by running her over.
But her boyfriend managed to pull her out of the way. His testimony will now form the basis of the prosecution case, together with what information his girlfriend managed to pass on before she died.
Elsewhere on the streets of the capital, shock has awakened old resentments. One group of protesters told me that they had been brought up to regard sexual harassment as something that had to be endured. They don't want the same for their daughters.
WOMAN: Nothing has changed. People keep on telling that mind-sets should be changed. It will take another 100 years to change the mind-set. The women of India cannot allow men to keep on raping until the mind-set is changed. That is one issue.
But the -- I think it should be a capital punishment. Nothing less than they should be hanged.
GERAINT VINCENT: Horror at what happened on these roads has stretched across India. The legacy of the woman who was raped and beaten and thrown from the bus may yet be just as great.
SUMMARY: Margaret Warner talks to New York Times reporter Heather Timmons about the details of the rape and murder charges over the death of 23-year-old medical student in New Delhi, plus a spreading national discussion and fury over the treatment of women in India.
MARGARET WARNER (Newshour): The justices agreed to hear arguments in two cases.
One is California's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, adopted by voters as referendum Proposition 8 in 2008. It was challenged on grounds that gay citizens have the same constitutional right to marry as heterosexuals. The justices will also review a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA.
That deprives legally married gay couples of federal benefits that are available to heterosexual couples.
Same-sex marriage is legal or will be soon in nine states and the District of Columbia. But 31 other states have amended their constitutions to bar gay unions.
Here with us to explain today's decisions and where they could lead is Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Next to Syria, where, in Damascus, a bomb attached to a fuel truck exploded near a hotel used by United Nations' monitors stationed in the capital. At least three people were hurt.
U.N. human rights investigators are also accusing forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity. They said the opposition was guilty of war crimes as well, but not to the same extent.
Meanwhile, in the northern rebel-held border town of Azaz, an airstrike by a government jet flattened buildings. Reports of the dead ranged from eight to 30, with even more wounded.
We have a report narrated by Jonathan Miller of Independent Television News.
JONATHAN MILLER: It came out of the blue, the blast cloud indicating that the bombs just dropped. In the town of Azaz near Syria's border with Turkey, it seems an entire neighborhood has been flattened, burying its residents, triggering panic.
Two brothers call out for an ambulance. "It's my sister," says one. "She's alive, clinging on for dear life."
It must be very hard to take in what's just happened. A little face terrified and trapped in a prison of reinforced steel and concrete. "Keep still," they urge him, as they try to figure out how to rescue him. Crowds gather. They saw away at the rubble, call into holes.
This is no act of God. This was the work of Bashar al-Assad's air force on the very day the U.N. accused the regime of crimes against humanity and war crimes. A father beckons the camera over. "My children," he says.
Later, pictures show him carrying the children from the rubble of what we assume was his home. The town of Azaz sits in a large enclave carved out by the rebels in northern Syria, but the regime still holds the town's military airport. And it's from there that they have launched deadly airstrikes.
One hit a hospital yesterday.
The residents of Azaz claim the MiG fighters which bombed them weren't targeting rebel fighters. They attacked civilians, they insist. More than 18,000 have now been killed since the uprising started.
SUMMARY: The ongoing battle in Aleppo between Assad regime troops and the Syrian Free Army has left civilians caught in the crossfire. Margaret Warner talks to Amnesty International's Scott Edwards and American Association for the Advancement of Science's Susan Wolfinbarger on how satellites are documenting human rights abuse in Syria.
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SUMMARY: The Boy Scouts of America announced Tuesday it had reaffirmed its ban on openly gay youth and adults becoming scouts and leaders. Jeffrey Brown and the Los Angeles Times' Molly Hennessy-Fiske discuss why this decision is as much a business concern as it is one of values.
Today, I was asked a direct question and gave a direct answer:
I believe that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.
I hope you'll take a moment to watch the conversation, consider it, and weigh in yourself on behalf of marriage equality:
I've always believed that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally. I was reluctant to use the term marriage because of the very powerful traditions it evokes. And I thought civil union laws that conferred legal rights upon gay and lesbian couples were a solution.
But over the course of several years I've talked to friends and family about this. I've thought about members of my staff in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships who are raising kids together. Through our efforts to end the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, I've gotten to know some of the gay and lesbian troops who are serving our country with honor and distinction.
What I've come to realize is that for loving, same-sex couples, the denial of marriage equality means that, in their eyes and the eyes of their children, they are still considered less than full citizens.
Even at my own dinner table, when I look at Sasha and Malia, who have friends whose parents are same-sex couples, I know it wouldn't dawn on them that their friends' parents should be treated differently.
So I decided it was time to affirm my personal belief that same-sex couples should be allowed to marry.
I respect the beliefs of others, and the right of religious institutions to act in accordance with their own doctrines. But I believe that in the eyes of the law, all Americans should be treated equally. And where states enact same-sex marriage, no federal act should invalidate them.
Thank you,
Barack
SUMMARY: President Obama said Wednesday that he now believes "same-sex couples should be able to get married." Judy Woodruff and author Kerry Eleveld discuss the president's "evolution" on the subject, then Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry and the Rev. Harry Jackson of Hope Christian Church debate the legal future of same-sex marriage.
Since there is no binding authority in the Communion, these international bodies are a vehicle for consultation and persuasion. In recent years, persuasion has tipped over into debates over conformity in certain areas of doctrine, discipline, worship, and ethics. The most notable example has been the objection of many provinces of the Communion (particularly in Africa and Asia) to the changing role of homosexuals in the North American churches (e.g., by blessing same-sex unions and ordaining and consecrating gays and lesbians in same-sex relationships), and to the process by which changes were undertaken. Those who objected condemned these actions as unscriptural, unilateral, and without the agreement of the Communion prior to these steps being taken. In response, the American Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada answered that the actions had been undertaken after lengthy scriptural and theological reflection, legally in accordance with their own canons and constitutions and after extensive consultation with the provinces of the Communion.
VICE PRESIDENT JOSEPH BIDEN: I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women and heterosexual men and women are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.
And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): At the U.S. Supreme Court today, justices heard arguments on a pair of international human rights cases. At issue is whether corporations and groups can be sued in American courts for alleged involvement in abuses overseas. The justices' decision could have big implications for corporate liability around the globe.
Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal was in the courtroom for the arguments, and she joins us to explain.
Now, we're talking two court -- two cases today with percolated up to the court, one of a two-century-old statute and one of a two-decade-old statute.
Starbucks and Google are the latest corporations to support gay marriage in Washington state.
Washington United for Marriage announced Wednesday that the two companies are among dozens of businesses that are supporting SB 6239 and HB 2516 (state bills).
These companies bring the total number of supportive businesses to more than 100. The list of companies includes Microsoft, Nike and Group Health Plan.
"Marriage equality provides a multitude of intangible benefits to Washington businesses. Recognizing the relationships of all - irrespective of sexual orientation - means an open and innovative business climate that ensures fundamental fairness and basic civil rights for all," said Lacey All, Chair of Washington United for Marriage. The addition of these companies continues to show that momentum in Washington State is on the side of equality for all Washingtonians."
At this time, six states plus the District of Columbia recognize marriage for same-sex couples under state law: Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont.
Nine states - California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Washington - provide same-sex couples with access to the state level benefits and responsibilities of marriage, through either civil unions or domestic partnerships. Same-sex couples do not receive federal rights and benefits in any state.
