I admit it, I’ve been obsessed in recent months with questions of epistemology (e.g. here and here and here) — that is, how we know, or think we know, what is true, and whether or not we have any doubts about what is true. I suppose the fact of changing my mind on gay marriage, and the reactions of others (especially people of religious faith) to that change, has helped to prompt this obsession.
So yesterday I read “A Crown of Feathers,” a short story by Isaac Bashevis Singer. I’m still in awe. Singer, too, is interested and then some in questions of epistemology. I urge you to read this story. (As far as I can tell it’s not available online; the book that it’s in, also called “A Crown of Feathers,” was published in 1973.)
I’m reluctant to say more, lest it prevent you from rushing out to get the book and read the story in its entirety, but in a in 1973 book review in the New York Times the great literary critic Alfred Kazin says this about the story:
In the title story, a beautiful and gifted young orphan, Akhsa, brought up by her wealthy, pious and indulgent grandfather, hears the voice of her dead grandmother scorning the harshly pious suitor her grandfather has picked out for her. Akhsa refuses him, the grandfather is disgraced and dies. Akhsa, alone in the world, now hears her grandmother telling her that Christ is the son of God and to look inside her pillow for the sign. It is a crown of feathers, topped by a cross. Akhsa is so impressed by this communication from the spiritual world that she becomes a Catholic, marries a Polish squire. Eventually she discovers that her ”grandmother” is being impersonated by the devil. In the last and most remarkable section of this story, she returns to the Jewish community, searches out and marries her old suitor, a religious fanatic who has never forgiven her and who forces her to undergo a series of wild penances that finally kill her. Before her death she still longs for a sign, ”the pure truth revealed.” But though she guesses that there is another crown of feathers in her pillow and this one bears the four Hebrew letters that stand for the unsayable name of God, Akhsa dies without the assurance that this crown is more a revelation of the truth than the other. The townspeople who find bits of down between the dead woman’s fingers can never figure out what she has been searching for, and ”no matter how much the townspeople wondered and how many explanations they tried to find, they never discovered the truth.”
The story ends with this sentence: “Because if there is such a thing as truth it is as intricate and hidden as a crown of feathers.” I’m going to be thinking about that sentence for a long time.
Categories: General
The issue of same-sex marriage involves the collision of many truths, such as what religious people believe marriage has to be, with what our government is tasked with doing, such as treating all similarly situated people equally under the law. Someone needs to develop a list of truths regarding legal same-sex marriage, and then make a “hierarchy” of truths, perhaps, so that we can decide which truths carry more weight than others, and hopefully that will lead us to making the best decision about same-sex marriage. If I may, I’d like to start off the “truth list” and I hope others will add to it, or suggest deletions, or revisions.
I don’t feel up to the challenge of evaluating which truths are more important than others right now. Starting the list is enough for a rainy Sunday afternoon! Therefore, my list is presented in no particular order, other than what came to me off the top of my head. I believe all the following statements are unequivocally, demonstrably true.
1. For hundreds, maybe thousands of years, only different-sex couples to participated in legal marriage.
2. The existence of same-sex couples in committed relationships and desiring to get married, is a very recent phenomenon.
3. Marriage has changed and been redefined over the years, such as from being between one man and any number of women, to one man and one woman. In America, women are no longer owned by, or legally subordinated to, their husbands. What used to be a lifetime commitment is now a “so long as I’m happy” commitment. People of different faiths and races are free to marry.
4. People commonly marry and divorce during a lifetime.
5. Some people believe marriage is a religious experience or circumstance
6. Many non-religious people get married, and do not believe they are participating in a religious experience or circumstance when they do so.
7. In most jurisdictions, same-sex couples are not allowed to get married.
8. In some jurisdictions, same-sex couples are allowed to get married.
9. In the United States, laws are made through a legislative process, or, in some states, through plebiscite.
10. The US Constitution specifically forbids the enactment of laws that favor or harm a religious belief.
11. The US Constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law lacking a rational public purpose to do otherwise.
12. Research shows that children do much better when they are raised by a married couple, compared to an unmarried couple.
13. Many same-sex couples are raising children. The children of a same-sex couple generally consider this couple their parents.
14. No couple is required to create or raise children, in order to get or stay married. The US Supreme Court has ruled that a convicted murderer, incarcerated for life with no opportunity for sexual relations with a spouse, cannot be denied the right to marry.
15. The Bible is silent on the topic of same-sex marriage
16. The Bible forbids pre-marital sex, adultery and divorce (except in the narrowest circumstances)
17. In America, it is legal to have pre-marital sex, and/or commit adultery and/or get divorced (for any reason).
18. There is no biblical instruction or imperative to impose biblical beliefs into secular law. See #16 and #17.
19. Imposing a faith belief into law would force all persons, regardless of faith, or no faith, to conform to a religious belief or practice.
20. Where same-sex marriage is legal, no person has been forced to marry someone of the same sex, or been denied the right to marry someone of the other sex.
Kevin said:
#15 I disagee with as not unequivocally, demonstrably true; because you’ve skipped the biblical admonition about same sex sexual activity.
#18 I believe Israel had a biblical imperative to be a theocracy. Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, etc. Therefore, they don’t even comprehend the idea of secular.
Until the past couple hundred years there was no such idea as the secular.
Oh Ki’s got this one she knows all about this stuff go Ki go.
what i meant is that most cultures didn’t really draw the line between religious and not religious, all one hodgepodge. most societies had a set of supernatural beliefs which affected their lifestyles governments…
Correction on #11-
“11. The US Constitution guarantees equal treatment under the law lacking a rational public purpose to do otherwise.”
If the law does not unduly burden a minority class then any old rational reason suffices for a law to stand. HOWEVER, if the law places a minority group such as women, or African Americans for example, if the minority group has had a history of discrimination, and the difference in the minority group people to the majority group, is irrelevant to their functioning as contributing member of society then the law must-
….Meet a compelling government interest that cannot be met in any other way other than burdening the minority group.
This is called the laws must meet a higher standard of Judicial Scrutiny.
Otherwise the majority would make laws, willy hilly harming a minority group that they disfavor, and they can enact the laws based on their raw numerical advantage.
So laws may stand IF the lawmakers had what they thought was a rational basis for passing the law, even though their thinking turns out to be in error, if the laws do not burden mainly a minority group. Legislators cannot pass laws that harm court decided minority groups unless they have a COMPELLING (as opposed to any old reason) COMPELLING government reason for passing a law and this compelling reason cannot be satisfied via any other method OTHER than harming a court decided minority group.
This is a very important part of the Marrriage Court cases before the Supreme Court. Sexual Minorities have asked the Supreme Court to declare them “Protected Class” If they get protected class, and I think they will, laws that target them and not other people, will be struck down.
See more about Judicial Scrutiny here
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/epcscrutiny.htm
Correction on #2-
2. The existence of same-sex couples in committed relationships and desiring to get married, is a very recent phenomenon
I am certain that since the beginning of the time Marriage became a ceremony, that same gendered couples desired this public affirmation of THEIR love and THEIR life partner through Marriage, but they kept their desires private. What they didn’t do until fairly recently, is make their private desire of Marriage public.
Kevin, you should read BoxTurtleBulletin every day.
Singer concludes, “Because if there is such a thing as truth it is as intricate and hidden as a crown of feathers.”
Please note that the story has profound truth claims, one being that the devil was impersonating the grandmother – and that this revelation is taken as certain – no “intricate and hidden as a crown of feathers” truth. Plain and acted upon. The image is casting a spell. There is something charming about truth that seems difficult to obtain – but the reality is that human actions gain their power from their relation to truths, whether they are complete truths or partial. Or whether the action is clothed in a packet of lies. [I have to wonder about the goodness of the suitor whose penances eventually kill the girl. Really?] Actions – even murder – stem from some sort of truth – (that people can kill one another). The point in the end is can one untangle truth from fiction in one’s actions or the actions of others? (Hamlet does that with his uncle and mother).
Revelation is not so very exotic that we cannot talk about it. It is important to consider that some of the important Christian revelations were really very concrete and specific. A revelation was not a general truth but a specific truth, i.e., that the person Jesus was (for example) the Christ. Another, the spirit is available to all people’s not merely those of Abrahamic descent. The nature of these revelations is not that they be merely accepted but discovered true. The testability of revelation is assumed. Truth claims stand or fall on whether they are true and not on their authority. In the above example, I wonder at the veracity of the claim about the grandmother being impersonated by the devil.
Truth claims should be open and able to be examined, considered and accepted or denied. Revelation has no special place any more than homage to special personages: particular scientists, schools of belief and thought, etc. The real issue with a lot of religious argument has to do with authority – the source of a claim. Truth claims must be separated from their sources.
All claims, however, from whatever source (revelation, spiritual insight, scientific procedure, hunch) should fall into the hopper of possibilities and there be examined for merits – how it fits with reality. Nothing should be precluded simply because of its source, however, because that would be prejudice.