contained though. crews are focusing on two large fires in san marcos and camp pendleton, more than 14,000 acres have burned so far. those are the headlines. "america tonight" is next and i'll see you back here 11:00 eastern. >> on "america tonight," the fix. addicts looking for a way out find what they and neuroscientists say is a miracle. but it's also an illegal drug. "america tonight" investigates, ibogaine. could the solution to addiction lie in a root? >> i've seen people at the end of the road completely detoxed, look like new human beings. no signs of withdrawal, and ready to change their life. >> also ahead: change at the top.

the new man leading one of the world's fastest growing economies. a man of the people with some personal mysteries. why the u.s. once barred india's new prime minister from this country. and the tin anniversary for same sex marriage. ten years after those are historic nup nuptials. lgbt community, how fast. and good evening, thanks for joining us. i'm joie chen. we've seen it all across the nation, the vicious spread of heroin and opiate abuse, the shattering of families.there is a search for options, sometimes

that takes addicts outside our borders. in an "america tonight" investigation, a controversial treatment that some say shaved their lives. >> my life was trying to find drugs every day. >> you're just you're messed up, slurring your words and looking like you're going to die. >> for paul o'heran, cancun is more than a trip to paradise. >> paul, how many time did you try? >> 12 times. my fifth time going through too detox are center. >> while most come to cancun for wild beach parties, paul came leer for awhat some people call a miscellaneousal cure from heroin addiction. >> i was sick using every waking moment of my life trying to find

drugs. sick of it. i was able to see the damage it did to my family. the last time they saw me high, sorry -- >> do you feel like you could have died, your addiction away sos strong? >> absolutely. -- so strong? >> absolutely. i've had seven of my friends die of drug abuse. >> desperate to kick his opiate habit, paul searched online for help. beech side treatment center called clear sky recovery. the operators say, they can use a drug called ibogaine. >> i thought that would be a miracle. it really piqued my interest. >> i have a little homework for you. and i said paul if i said it happened for me 11 years ago would you now listen for more? and he would say, absolutely. >> irene does patient intake but she also serves as a walking

documentary for ibogaine. originally prescribed opiates to managed her arthritis, irene developed an addiction that quickly spun out of control. >> one morning i was driving my kids to school, i was driving in the fast lane. my kids yelled, mom. i nearly hit the wall. >> she heard about ibogaine from a friend and was immediately intrigued. >> was it successful? >> it was very successful. >> how many years have you been clean now? >> november will be 11. >> so what exactly is ibogaine? it is an hall us hallucinogen. used by members of the buete religion in gabon. debra nash wa is a top

neuroscientist. >> when you first heard of the substance from africa that could have amazing effects, you must have been skeptical at first. >> i couldn't believe it. how come this, didn't make sense. >> what did you do? >> i wanted to see it with my own eyes. >> reporter: so she traveled to the netherlands. >> no signs of withdrawal and ready to change their life and i thought, what is this teach us about the brain? i need to know. >> reporter: with some money from private donors, dr. nash submitted a promote to the fda to collect more data on ibogaine. the food and drug administration

approved dr. nash's proposal for clinical trials more than 20 years ago. back in 1993 here in miami. that's when they can administered the first dose of ibogaine in the u.s. but suddenly the funding dried up and the trials were forced to shut down. >> i was devastated really. we had nowhere to go and we had fda permission to proceed. >> undeterred dr. nash took her trials offshore, opening a private clinical research center on the island of st. kitts. >> we detosmed over -- detoxed over 300 patients. the ibogaine was 98% effective for trials. we couldn't believe it. we stood around an washed it. >> she was so impressed with the

success of ibogaine she treated dr. absento salah to administer the drug. he's the director of clear sky medical recovery in cancun. >> for the last 19 years i'm actually practicing emergency room, i work at the hospital every day. >> and then you come leer for a few hours a day? >> then i come here for a few hours. >> dr. salah has treated over 700 addicts at his clinic. he believes ibogaine will help. they receive a test dose and then soon -- >> there was buzzing in my ears and i ne knew i was in afternoon adventure. we met paul right after he got back from his ibogaine trip. >> you see parts of your life. some of it was good, some of it

was bad. for me it was like, you know, you don't stop you're going to be six feet under. >> how do you feel right now? >> aplaysing. amazing. the doctors say it's not a cure and i know it's not. you have to really work at not being an addict. but right now, it is a miracle drug for me. >> researchers believe that ibogaine works by actually changing the brain's chemical wiring to break the cycle of addiction. >> you take a person who's been on drugs or alcohol for a decade. hitting it hard. the brain has neuro-adapted. you can't delay gratification. what ibogaine seems to do for the person is to engage the frontal lobe, very important. it kind of puts the brakes on impulsive behavior. they go through ibogaine detox and now all of a sudden they say, you know, maybe i need to go to meetings, maybe i need to be in treatment.

>> dr. nash says ibogaine is not a cure but she says it's an addiction interrupter. >> it brings about a reset. >> as simple as hitting reset on your computer? >> it's amazing for a neuroexecutive vice president like me to say this. the reset button has been hit. >> we have treated patients with very, very good results. >> really? >> yes. >> though ibogaine may not be a miracle cure, for paul this is a miracle. >> when i look out and i see the boats and the island, credit its just -- i think about the possibilities and i couldn't say that last tuesday before i came down. >> coming up ibogaine could be the best opiate addiction out there. but why isn't it legal in the u.s? >> i think this is the farmer pa

companies. if they wanted it, it would go through like dwreeslightning. >> and we catch up with paul, is ibogaine still working for him? >> also ahead, the fire this time. thousands forced to flea and southern california still ablaze. science investigators already think arson may be to blame.

>> every saturday, al jazeera america brings you controversial... >> both parties are owned by the corporations.

>> ..entertaining >> it's fun to play with ideas. >> ...thought provoking >> get your damn education. >> ...surprising >> oh, absolutely! >> ...exclusive one-on-one interviews with the most interesting people of our time. >> you're listening because you want to see what's going to happen. >> i want to know what works what do you know works? >> conversations you won't find anywhere else. >> talk to al jazeera. >> only on al jazeera america. >> oh my! >> now we continue our look at a drug some call a miracle in the search for a cure to addiction. before the break we first heard about effectiveness of ibogaine by our correspondent, adam may, he continues his investigation

into this plant based drug with the important question, why isn't ibogaine a legal treatment in this country? >> i would say it's life changing. >> zena says she's finally living her dream life.about. >> my life is so good now! >> this wasn't always the case. growing up the in an indian reservation, in upstate new york, she was surrounded by heavy drug users, she was using too. >> i used to snort and drink. once, i used crack, it made me verfeel very good, for a while. >> to this day she reflects on the powerful experience including hours of hallucinations. >> whatever happened during ibogaine it kind of helped me cut the emotional ties to my thinking. words can't explain away i saw.

>> dr. nash and her team report that half of their patients remained completely clean for at least one year after detox. >> this could be a blockbuster drug. and there are millions and millions of people who are ready to benefit. >> like any drug rehab program, there's always a very strong chance of relapse, even with ibogaine. that's why dr. nash sends many of the patients from st. kitts back to miami for after-care treatment. that helps their success. treatment run by john jiordano. >> i've owned treatment centers, i'm a recovering addict myself, i've had ibogaine myself. >> for other 30 years, his clinics offered traditional therapy. after helping thousands of addicts, he claims ibogaine is

the most effective detox out out there. >> they feel differently. it's and incredible drug. if you don't take care of yourself your prognosis is very poor. you still have all the old friends, all the old habits and sometimes some of that stuff can draw you back in. >> and that's exactly what happened to zena, she returned to the reservation and relapsed. >> you didn't change your environment. >> did not. did not. >> how critical do you think after-care and changing environment are to successfully getting off of drugs even with ibogaine? >> if you are going to return to your same environment, make sure, make sure you have a good support group. >> even though you relapse, sometimes relapse is part of the recovery process. >> years later, zena finally moved off the reservation and checked in to giordano's treatment facility in miami.

now she's an ibogaine success story. >> do you think the ibogaine experience was helping you years later? >> absolutely. absolutely. absolutely. >> despite dr. nash's research and the anecdotal results reported by treatment experts like john giordano, ibogaine today is illegal in the u.s. the most common treatments for heroin and other opiate addiction are drugs like methadone and zaboxin. while they reduce the craiferg for opiates, many say they replace one craving to another. >> they swimp from oxy and whatever you're on to methadone which is an opiate, that possess you up as -- that messes you up as much as oxycontin or anything else. which is illegal.

>> hoping to end his dependence on methadone, a so-called treatment that you are unable to kick. >> you might be on it the rest of your life. that's not clean, that's still an addict. >> ibogaine has met resistance from the medical establishment. dr. phil skulnick. >> might with, rigorous way, absolutely not. there's already in the literature quite old in which'in fact you could get lesions in the brains of animals that have been administered ibogaine. >> credit so far the trials are worth doing. >> have you found anything that you feel should prevent or stop ibogaine from becoming

mainstream? >> no. no. one dose of ibogaine is not going to have toxicity to the brain. >> so what's the holdup? >> i think it is the pharma companies. this is not rocket science. if they wanted it, it would go through like lightning. >> pharmaceutical companies manufacture opiates, and there are other companies that have their own addiction drugs in the pipeline. and perhaps there are other reasons why people would not want ibogaine or don't want ibogaine to advance. >> he admits that addiction medications are rarely embraced by big pharma. >> pharma has been generally indifferent to drugs to treat addictions. >> and ibogaine faces yet another problem. it's a plant and that means it can't be patented. >> drug companies are businesses, publicly held and it's a very risky business so the returns necessarily have to be high to support that risk.

>> is this a money-driven issue? is that the real reason that ibogaine is not available in the u.s? >> is this america? absolutely! >> another hurdle. the dea classifies ibogaine as a schedule 1 drug in the u.s. that means it's considered to have high potential for abuse. because it is a hall us a no ha. >> i was a skeptic. but my counselors felt otherwise. they felt for many, that was part of the process. >> to make the treatment commercially viable in the u.s., researchers agree that the visions have to go. certain scientists, including dr. nash, are working to provide ibogaine without the trip.

>> do you think there will be a day when ibogaine will be available in the u.s? >> i haven't been able to experience the reality but i haven't given up the hope. people need help. >> people like zena lions and paul heron, more than a month clean and counting. >> it's incredible. just incredible. all i can say. i'm 100% an advocate for ibogaine. i'm clean and clear. and i feel good. >> my role in this was simply to either show that it worked or to debunk it. and that was always my plan. i said early ibogaine works or it doesn't. but we in the scientific community need to test, to study, this is too big a problem, the drug addiction in our society. it's too large to leave this stone unturned. >> "america tonight"'s adam may rejoins us leer.

adam this is a fascinating set of reports you've done here. you got to ask and tell me now about this young man paul. has it worked for him, is he lasting? >> paul is doing well. we just checked, and he's back in his small town in missouri. the effects of the ibogaine will stay in his system for some time. the real test for paul will come probably late july, early august, that's where that wears out, and it will be critical for paul according to the researchers that have looked into this, to seek additional support groups for paul to stay clean. >> and that's very important. >> very important, you have to have that support. >> as the debate goes on about whether this should be approved for use in the u.s. one of the factors had to do with developing a nonhallucinogennic form, ask that possible? >> they are doing this in new zealand, can ibogaine without the trip. we don't know how effective it

is yet, too early in the clinical trials, whether some day this could end up in the u.s. legally, concerns by dr. nash and others who have experience with ibogaine, the hallucinations are so critical to the long term staying sober, the hallucination he led him down the dark road, he was remembering the death of friends, friend who had passed, the people we have talked to that have tried ibogaine say that was a critical component in their success, not just the chemical change in the brain, the reset but the psychological effect of ibogaine. >> it would be a deterrent in that sense of people who want to use it or abuse it. >> those who tried ibogaine said they didn't want to do it again, not recreationally.

>> trying to do it yourself, cure yourself of addiction? >> we have layered about that, people in the u.s. who get their hands on ibogaine. dr. nash says that's extremely dangerous. side effects are cardiac arrest. if you have any preexisting cardiac problems, accrue are at risk of having a heart attack. a crash cart is on hand in the islands, in case you had a heart attack. >> a look ahead on "america tonight." >> what do you think if people didn't vaccinate their kids at all? >> i think people would be healthier. >> if we had our look, numbers

dropped. orange county and other counties, increases in case of measles. >> to vaccinate or not? a decision that could impact other families as well. "america tonight"'s michael okwu reports on the effect nonvaccinated children have on those who have been vaccinated. even as wildfires rage on, two arrests. but was it arson? arson? humanity. >> this is some of the best driving i've ever done, even though i can't see. >>techknow >> we're here in the vortex...

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>> we have to move out of here right now >> i think we have a problem... >> we have to get out of here... >> they're telling that they they don't wanna show what's really going on... >> mr. drumfield, i'd like to speak to you for a minute... >> this is where columbia's war continues... >> ...still occupied... >> police have arrived... you see the blast scars from a bomb that went off...

>> and new a snapshot of stories making headlines on "america tonight." new risks for the spread of mers virus, the respiratory virus has already killed 157 people and several cases have been seen in the united states. u.n. monitors warn of escalating human rights violations in eastern ukraine. a new report chronicles, killings torturing and abductions by both pro-russian separatists and ukrainian security forces. the ukraine is to hold presidential elections on may 25th. failure to disclose what it knew on some vehicles, general

motors should have told consumers earlier. linked to at least 13 deaths. wildfires in san diego county. investigators are taking a hard look already at what caused the initial sparks. two teenage rs from escondido were charged with many starting a fire, there's no direct evidence that links them to the ten wildfires that broke out on tuesday. caused moreover $20 million in damage and forced 176,000 people to evacuate their homes. correspond jennifer bjorkland is in escondido . the path of the fire must have been quite fierce. >> you can. and one of the strike teams told me joie that you can tell

exactly where the fire came from when you examine what it left behind. the tree behind me, all the leaves are faced in the same direction, the leaves are sucked towards the ition anything and are -- the ignition and are diswroo id there. there is still smoke rising even though a strike team and a mopup crew came through a couple of hours ago, turning over the logs, digging up the roots and putting flame retardant foam everywhere and water, digging holes and burying embers. just because whenever the wind kicks up every hot spot is in jeopardy of having an ember hitchhike and jump over onto another rooftop and then we have it all over again. as you can see there's still a lot of work to be done here in

escondido. are you in a residential area? it's hard to tell after the burn that's gone through. >> it's a little bit rural, it is residential, it is in the canyons and this is the cocos fire in van coast. you can see -- in san marcos. there is a lots of tractors, we've seen some livestock. some chickens were pick up earlier this morning, by fire patrol, and there was a cat rustling around and he was singed and his paw pads were very tender and he didn't want to come down. animal control got him, they said they will get him some help. you realize this was just on fire just a few hours ago. and it is just now starting to kind of come back to life and they're just starting to get their footing again.

now that the day has really gotten underway and they're looking at what's left behind. >> correspondent jennifer bjorkland. thanks for being with us. >> all right joie. >> explosive change, an election in india. india's next prime minister, narendra modi also upset the congress party of the gandhi dynasty, raised some alarm in the united states. india is one of america's biggest trade partners. but it's 1.2 billion people are increasingly calling for change. narendra modi cast himself as a man of the people, tremendously popular in his home state, forward looking view. a charismatic speaker modi kept his mother by his side, creating

the modi way of support. >> bigger and larger than identity of the party and the party is being identified by that man. so it is kind of not in india, i think largely, it is kind of a modi wave. >> born into one ever india's lower castes, he helped his father selling tea, the privileged background of his main rival, a grandson of the gandhi political dynasty, a leader of india since it almost gained independence. modi joined a right wing nationalist group called the rss, a, vicious round of tit-for-tat attacks between muslims and hindus in 2000 resulted in the -- in 2002 resulted in deaths of 2,000

people, led to united states to deny him a visa to visit this country where nearly 3 million of indians live. more than 150 million who went to the polls were first time voters, eager to see modi live up to expectations that he can bring growth to all of india now, but al jazeera' al jazeeraa says: >> gdp growth has plummeted less than 5%, from 9% a year ago. it's going to want policies that attracts foreign and domestic investment in india. >> if the new prime minister does take president obama up on his invitation, he is happily single but admitwhen he

registered for election that he has been married for nearly 50 years. 60 years since the brown v. board of education decision, it's a tough one, frustrated parents willing to go far to get their kids the best. >> i wouldn't have done it. i never thought that i would go to jail for lying about my zip codes. maybe they do it for jobs, for safety reasons, for education. >> how districts aim to stop them from stealing education. next. .

>> it's been 60 years since the supreme court in the landmark brown versus topeka board of education ruling handed down a decision meant to reshape education, ending segregation in schools and many american schools remain segregated if not legally at least in effect. often underperforming because of where they can afford to live. some call this a zip code education. parents hoping to get their children a better education, end

up border shopping. soledad o'brien reports. >> kelly rms bolar of akron ohio, is a 43-year-old mother and a teacher's aide. also a convicted felon. she went to jail in 2011 for illegally enrolling her children in a school district. >> i had issues with my school district. i was talking to my father about it, send them to our school, my school. you're here every day, here all the time anyway. >> was it done to sort of sneak it in? did you know i'm putting an address where i don't live. >> right. i've been working for the school system for many years, i knew a lot of students who did the same thing. >> find an address, put it down.

>> it wasn't like i was finding it, it was burger king's address, it was my dad's address. we lived on the same road. but he lived in the township and i lived in the city. we literally lived five minutes from each other. >> and the township had better schools. >> they did. >> her daughter enrolled in her father's district copley fairlon. >> we had a computer lab, we had the garden outside, we had our own greenhouse and i was just so grateful to have been able to go there. for just two years. >> so tell me how you were caught? >> well, they -- what i understand is that they had an investigator from cleveland area, i think, and he would come down and he would watch my whereabouts, he would watch me

go to and fro, and then they came to their conclusion, stating that they had clear convincing evidence that i did not live or reside in copley. >> williams bolar withdrew her children from school and enrolled them back in akron. >> it was huge. we didn't learn that much. it was disruptive in classes. there was no resource he. it was just completely different and i felt like i wasn't learning anything at all. >> williams bolar was surprised she says when 18 months later she was indicted. >> what was the charges? >> grand theft which was the money and signing -- >> forgery? >> forgery. >> she went to jail for nine days. the judge said she wanted to send a message to others like her. >> i had the swabbing of the mouth. i had the finger printing. i had the picture.

>> who was taking the children? >> the irony of it all. he had to watch them. >> in the district that they allegedly were never in? >> right right right. >> williams bolar's story went national, viral. have and the governor pardoned her. >> i never thought i would go to jail for lying about my zip code. lying about their jobs, maybe they did it for safety reasons, for education, there is soful different reasons why a parent would want to take their out of that district into another -- their child out of that district into another district. >> also arrested and clarnlgd with theft of services or stealing an education. >> we got handcuffed like the criminals with a belt. >> with a leather belt. >> with the handcuffs to our our -- >> we went to jail, spent a

couple of why hours in jail. >> hamlet credit garcia, a cuban immigrant and alicia, a ukrainian immigrant, were having troubles. the garcias say they reconciled and alecia and fierorella moved back. to the grandfather's school district. that's when the trouble began. >> the school district contacted us in april and said there's a problem with your residency. so we came in to meet with the principal. >> and what happened? >> she kept insisting that i never lived there. and she's turning the -- you know us to the police. >> the superintendent wouldn't

talk to us but she made good on her threat and turned the case over to police. the garcias say three were cooperating showing nail, alicia's voter registrations and that she was living in montgomery county. >> we hadn't heard anything for amonth and then in august -- a month and then in august they called us and said we had a choice to turn ourselves in or him iting out a wasn't -- putting out a warrant to arrest us. >> what did you think? >> disgusting, everything, everything come to my head as disgusting. >> i wouldn't believe this is actually happening in america over education. a five-year-old child. and i pleaded with superintendent, i said, look we're good parents. we're good citizens. i'm a business owner.

you know i never did anything. i always you know walked a straight line. >> the garcias turned themselves in. in the criminal complaint, the district attorney allegation the garcias stole $10,000 from the county. the price of one year's tuition at pine road elementary. that's a felony. punishable by up to seven years in prison. the school district's website reads, it is the intent to prosecute to the fullest extent of the law any individual furnishing false information about their residency. in pennsylvania, as in all states, school districts get some federal and state funding. but property taxes are the primary source for funding public schools. the gap between rich and poor school districts are so vast that the state earned a d on the national report card on school funding. that report is put out by the education law center in new jersey. >> there would be an argument

from the school that would say listen, we fund this school with taxpayer money. some state and some federal funds. but the people in the community pay for this school that's in this county. so you're not from here. you don't get to -- >> i can answer the argument. first of all, my wife did live in that district. okay? >> my father is a taxpayer who owns a house there. >> and i believe that every children should have access to good education. socioeconomic status, everyone. >> bus it's not in montgomery county. >> that would be wrong because we are the same country. don't treat me like an illegal alien because i live in philadelphia. >> where you are paying taxes. >> the schools are unsafe. if you live in philadelphia because you are a person that don't have the money to live in

mont gormt county that' that's-montgomery county that's not your fault. okay? >> the school that is in your neighborhood in philadelphia, is that school unsafe? >> the school is unsafe, they didn't pass the ayp, w which is for the no child left behind law. >> the gars yas think they're a a -- the garcias think they're a test case. identified at least ten families that illegally enrolled there. the only family being prosecuted is the garcias. >> let's ask the garcia family to be an example to try close that war, this can lap to you. >> it's an interesting phrase you use, across the border. >> that's how they treat the montgomery school district.

>> we're talking about philly not canada. >> there is a line that they don't want people to cross. >> soledad adds, since her interview with the garcias, he has pled guilty for knowingly providing false information. they had to pay back $11,000 worth of stolen education will not face jail time. a new report confirms though that even six decades after the brown decision america's classrooms are still separate and unequal. in new york, illinois, maryland and michigan, more than half of black students attend school districts where more than half the minority are a majority. in 2011 only 23% of black students attended a majority white school. the opposite to 1968.

gary orfield details what he found. >> gary, thank you for joining us. 60 years since brown. are we talking about desegregation, resegregation, and is anything that's happened here by design or really by default? >> well, i have do answer that question, in all of the above. there is desegregation a little, mostly from people moving into new areas since we don't have much in the way of policy. there is a lot of resegregation. places that were all once wide or were once integrated and now are becoming segregated first by race and then by class. a lot of that is happening in sectors of suburbia now. some of it is happening by individual choice but all the research shows that blacks and latinos really don't have the same choices in the housing market. whietwhites and asians seem to e

pretty good choices. some of it ask happening by design, we are building housing in areas with terribly segregated schools. that's a bad state. >> why hasn't that emphasis actually helped to promote an ending of these disparities? >> we really only worked on these particular issues, the issues of desegregating and integrating our schools. we only worked on it for about five years, back in the johnson administration and in the early '70s. since that time we spent vast amounts of our money trying to make schools more equal. the policies failed. there's good evidence that segregated schools are unequal very systemically, and interracial schools when properly run provide major advantages for all groups of kids. >> how do we achievefully real

or lasting change then? >> we have to decide that we want change. it hasn't been a priority for a long time. we could ignore this issue, ignore the stratification by race and class and just hoping that testing and accountability would do the -- big the big solution -- be the big solution and it hasn't been. so it's coming back at us and people don't want to talk about it because it's sensitive. but most of the solutions are voluntary and positive educationally. and they are win-wins, they are gain for white and asian kids and gains for black and latino kids. there hasn't been a single national study of school desegregation on any large scale since 1967. one of the things we're calling on is for obama administration to start something like that. the american life has changed since then and we need new changes about managing

diversity. >> you talk about racial disparities, income disparities, i wouldn't how you resolve that after people move into the communities they move into or take kids out and move them to private schools so they don't have to attend those schools. how do you get around that? >> you have to offer them good schools that will give kids what they need in terms of getting them ready for college and so forth and we have to are have teachers that deal with diversity and family background and so forth. it's not rocket science. it's lard, what i say integration is lard. segregation is impossible. but it can be done and it does make a major positive difference for students. so to get it started we have to decide where we are and where we want to be as a country. we're in the last generation of a white majority in the united states and we have to prepare the country for a very, very diverse future in which everybody will be part of a minority. and we have to know to how to

understand each other and work together in many, many spheres of our society. and it's hard to better than that in segregate -- to learn that in segregated neighborhoods and segregateschools. >> gary brown, where 60 years ago and just an nance. thanks for being here. >> this saturday plarks a big anniversary of the nation's first same-sex marriage. >> i think folks at that particular moment really had no idea that ten years later we would be talking about same sex marriage in a quarter of the country. >> a witness to america's first gay marriages. next, how far marriage equality has come in just one decade. dee

perspectives on every issue. al jazeera america. there's more to finical news than the ups and downs of the dow. for instance, could striking

workers in greece delay your retirement? i'm here to make the connections to your money real. >> ten years ago this saturday reporter michael laver stood in fronting of the cambridge, massachusetts city hall, as same sex marriage. as he considered how attitudes around the world have shifted since 2004, and what still hasn't changed. >> on may 17th, 2004, when massachusetts same sex marriage

law took effect, i was actually on the steps of cambridge city hall on 1211 alameda county, when the first same sex marria s were, there was a real celebratory atmosphere, people had wedding dresses on, folks together for 30, 40 years just in tears at the idea that finally the state would recognize their relationship. >> i think folks at that particular moment really had no idea that ten years later, we would be talking about same sex marriage in a quarter of the country, and here in d.c. there's really been a shift in momentum in support of same sex marriage and there's a number of different factors that one can contribute to that. >> it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that i think same sex couples should be able to get married.

>> president obama coming out for same sex marriage just over two years ago was a watershed moment. and if you look at some of the polling that came out nationally after obama came out for marriage, the numbers of people of color who supported that issue jumped by almost 20%. in 2013, last june the supreme court struck down a portion of the defense of marriage act. >> hey hey, ho ho,. >> the decision really opened the flood gates for same sex couples to challenge their respective state same sex marriage bans. the patch work of laws really doesn't make much sense. you can't have maryland laws, and then in virginia people aren't able to marry. it really presents a number of complicated legal questions in terms of benefits and rights. i think ultimately the supreme

court is going ohave do decide this case. a lot of folks are thinking that's going to happen as early as next year. there's more than 30 states where same sex marriage is still banned. i think it's important to point out that at least a quarter of this country has the ability to marry if you are gay or lesbian. there are same issues that needs to be addressed, antitransgender violence is a huge concern. things happening overseas, uganda, nigeria, parts of latin america where antilgbt issues remains pervasive. nigeria, are and in russia, where antigay plairnlg issues, this is not something that happened 20, 30 years ago, this happened in 2014. so yes we might have marriage

rights in 18 states and d.c. and many countries in europe and south africa and new seeld and d so forth. but there's still a lot of work to be done. >> we will see. that is it for us here on "america tonight." please remember if you would like to comment on any stories you've seen here tonight you can log onto our website, aljazeera.com/americatonight. you can find mowr comments on twitter or facebook. we'll have more of "america tonight" coming up. >> weekday mornings on

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