With both Iowa and Vermont legalizing same sex marriage within the last week, we wanted to take a step back and talk about the future of gay marriage in the United States. What is the next step for the gay rights movement, and which state will be the next one to let same sex couples marry? Or are these court decisions the spark that will mobilize those opposed This morning will be present both sides of the argument. We'll begin first with Matt Coles, Director of the ACLU’s LGBT Project and representing the other side of the conversation is Maggie Gallagher. She is the President of the National Organization for Marriage.

Here are two of the PSAs released by the campaigns:

70 years ago African-American opera singer Marian Anderson sang on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial after the Daughters of the American Revolution barred her from performing at Constitution Hall. The concert packed the National Mall and Ms. Anderson became an overnight civil rights icon. For a look at what her legacy means in the 21st century The Takeaway turns to Patrik Henry Bass. He is the Senior Editor of Essence magazine and the author of Like A Mighty Stream: The March on Washington, August 28, 1963.

Through the magic of YouTube you can watch a portion of the concert:

A U.S. judge has ruled that a class action lawsuit can move ahead against several large companies accused of helping South Africa's apartheid-era government in violation of international human rights law. The case has been going on since 2002 and was initially filed against 50 corporations and involved ten lawsuits claiming more than $400 billion in damages. While the cases have been consolidated to only two lawsuits against five companies, the corporations are a who's who of American companies: the computer giant IBM, Ford and General Motors are among the U.S. companies facing demands for damages from thousands of apartheid's victims. The BBC's Lucy Bailey has more.

It sounds really strange—a type of body fat that actually burns calories. But that’s exactly what so-called brown fat does. Babies and animals have it, but it’s long been thought that adults don’t. However a study coming out this week in the New England Journal of Medicine found that many adults do have this good fat. It’s the first hint of a possible new approach to treating obesity. Madelyn Fernstrom, the founder and director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Weight Management Center, joins The Takeaway to talk about the significance of this finding.

The delicate strategic dance between the Obama administration and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continues: The U.S. has offered to attend direct talks with Iran aimed at resolving an ongoing dispute over Iran's nuclear program. But why now? The answer may be more complex than you think. The Takeaway talks to Gary Sick, a senior research scholar at Columbia University. Also joining the conversation is Trita Parsi, author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Iran, Israel and the United States and President of the National Iranian American Council and President of the National Iranian American Council.


Here is CNN's report on opening lines of communications between the two countries:

It's not just the market that's bottoming out in this recession. There are nationwide reports of anxiety and stress in the face of these trying economic times. Reports are so widespread that the federal government was prompted to put up website warnings about symptoms of depression, substance abuse, and even suicide. Pam Belluck is covering the story for the New York Times and in her research she met Victoria Villalba, a woman who has been experiencing severe anxiety about the economy. They both join The Takeaway to share their stories.


For more, read Pam Belluck's article, Recession Anxiety Seeps Into Everyday Lives in today's New York Times.

Also, check out the government's website, Getting Through Tough Economic Times for more information on the signs of recession depression and where to get help.

In a sign of further democratization in the world’s largest Muslim nation, Indonesia, holds parliamentary elections today. But holding an election in this nation is a huge proposition. 170 million voters, spread out across an archipelago of thousands of islands, with more than 300 local languages and a population that spans from rural hunter-gatherers to an urban elite. But this is a country that’s come a long way. The Economist this week says Indonesia has gone from being an “authoritarian basket case to a regional role model” and that Indonesia has “a fair claim to be South-East Asia’s only fully functioning democracy”. To help us assess those claims and to ask why this election is of interest to Americans, we are joined by Dr. William Liddle, an Indonesia expert at the University of Ohio and from the Indonesian capital, Jakarta, the BBC’s Indonesia correspondent, Lucy Williamson.

With Easter around the corner, you may be dreaming of chocolate bunnies, but getting the cacao crop to make those tasty treats is becoming increasingly difficult. A third of the world's cacao crop dies every year due to the fact that the trees are necessarily grown in a monoculture and thus incredibly vulnerable to disease. So what is a candymaker to do? Well, if you are the Mars Corp. you hire a Global Director of Plant Science, specifically, you hire Howard-Yana Shapiro, and become the only chocolate company that has a dedicated research facility in “the center of this disease cesspool” (Howard’s words). Mars, which owns the Mars, Snickers and M&M candy brands, is also set to spend tens of millions of dollars annually certifying that the cocoa used in their $10 billion of chocolate products are sustainably sourced by 2020.

Here to tell us more about why cacao trees are at risk, and why no one but him and a few folks at the USDA are researching this, is Howard-Yana Shapiro.

With unemployment numbers at 8.5 percent it’s hard for anyone who gets a pink slip to look for a job through rose colored glasses. But blogger Marci Alboher says there is promise for those pounding the pavement in this slumping economy, but it may not come from the traditional job hunting methods. She runs the Yahoo blog Working the New Economy, and she joins us with some true stories about people who are finding work in creative ways, which may be a necessity when times are tough.

After a group of Somali pirates seized a freighter sailing under an American flag, the U.S. navy and the FBI have moved in to negotiate for the captain's freedom. The captain is being held hostage in a small life boat after the rest of the crew was released. The New York Times' East Africa Bureau Chief, Jeffrey Gettleman has been following the dramatic twist and turns of the crimes of the Somali pirates for months now and he joins us from the scene of their latest hijacking.

For more from the New York Times, read the article, Navy Tracking Pirates and Their U.S. Hostage.

Here's the AP report on the American crew taking back the vessel from the pirates: