Reflections of a Boston Lawyer

Dear friends, This has been quite a week.  Today is Easter Sunday, and a few days ago the Supreme Court heard arguments in the same-sex marriage cases.  The religious right (has that term become interchangeable with "evangelicals"?) opposes same-sex marriage, arguing that homosexuality is against God's law and that same-sex marriage threatens the institution of marriage.  I know that includes some of you. There was a time, much earlier in my life, decades before anyone thought seriously about same-sex marriage, when I accepted the view that God loves homosexuals, but that homosexual conduct was sinful behavior.  During my senior year in college, I was placed in the middle of a conflict between the campus Christian fellowship that I helped lead and a member of the gay Christian community.  Although I was the one voice of dissent among the fellowship's leaders concerning how to resolve the conflict, once the decision was made, I dutifully followed the evangelical

The man sat in the center seat; I sat on the aisle.  The passengers continued to embark, and we both had to get up for the young woman who had the window seat.  The man seemed agitated, and I found him quite annoying.  He squirmed in his seat, often reaching for something in his back pocket (his wallet I think).  Every time he did, he intruded on my limited space, which forced me to have to lean into the aisle to avoid contact.  Even when he sat still, his elbows crossed the imaginary line, sometimes poking me in the stomach, other times just touching my arm.  He was not a large man, but he took up more space than his size would suggest.  I guessed that he was in his mid-forties, Hispanic, sporting a mustache and seemingly oblivious to his frequent impositions. Several times as we waited for our delayed flight he would make and receive calls and send and receive text messages on the cell phone that he clutched as his last connection to the ground.  His voice and fingers were animate