In a small group with four or five other students, give your personal reactions to the May 2004 decision by the Massachusetts Supreme Court to issue marriage licenses to couples of the same sex. If there is no disagreement among the members (an unusual situation, given the American public's very split opinions on this subject), the group members should assume roles, with two students arguing for the rightness of the Supreme Court's action and two students arguing that the action is wrong and should be stopped, perhaps by the passage of the proposed amendment to the Constitution that defines
marriage as between one man and one woman. After a certain amount of time, the group is required to reach a joint decision. One or two members of the group should remain out of the discussion and take notes on how the discussion proceeded and how the joint decision was reached. Referring to the leadership acts described in the text, see if you can pinpoint who performed each of them. The whole group should then assess the kind of job each member did at articulating his or her position and how well they listened to each other.