Good Article on the Bountiful Polygamists

http://www.nationalpost.com/story-printer.html?id=2035870

Bountiful misconceptions - Community's women not powerless, researcher says

Brian Hutchinson, National Post

McGill professor Angela Campbell says the preconceptions of Bountiful women in polygamous relationships are often skewed, and "at least some women are able to wield considerable authority in their marriages." Ian Smith, Canwest News Service Files

Polygamists Winston Blackmore and James Oler can continue to practise what they preach: Accept multiple wives, including teenage girls. Flout Canadian law.

Criminal charges laid against the two men from Bountiful were revoked this week by B. C. Supreme Court Justice Sunni Stromberg-Stein. Bail conditions were lifted, and the two are again free to do as they please.

McGill University law professor Angela Campbell does not endorse polygamous practice. She "has no love for Winston Blackmore," even if he is more laid back and more approachable than Mr. Oler, who represents the more conservative of Bountiful's two polygamous religious factions. Both are "problematic people," she says.

But she doesn't get too worried about them, or what goes on inside Bountiful.

Prof. Campbell is one of the few outsiders -- and a secular, inquisitive, intellectual one at that -- to have a well-informed opinion of the place, based on first-hand observation and experience. She has enjoyed direct, almost unfettered access to the women of Bountiful.

About 1,000 people live in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints community. It is next to Creston, B. C., near the U. S. border.

Prof. Campbell has spent some of the past two summers in Creston and Bountiful, conducting research and interviewing women who call themselves "sister wives."

"It's a fascinating, amazing place," she says. "It's complicated. It's very diverse."

More than many would imagine. She met two ladies who, besides being married in the "celestial" Bountiful sense to Mr. Blackmore, are married, in the state-sanctioned legal manner, to each other.

Prof. Campbell has also encountered in Bountiful monogamous marriages. Even a traditional wedding that, she says, seemed "right out of the pages of a bridal magazine."

Preconceptions she had before her trip to Bountiful were shattered.

The results of her work and the opinions she has formed are controversial. Reaction ranges from mild shock to anger. "I've received some hateful emails," says Prof. Campbell, a Harvard law school graduate who is married (to one man) with children.

Bountiful's critics, feminists especially, have trouble accepting that women there are not brainwashed, subjugated automatons "in need of deliverance," which is how the media often portray them, Prof. Campbell says.

In fact, the Bountiful women whom she has interviewed are clear thinking, resourceful and in some cases well educated. Not to be underestimated. They "cast Bountiful as a heterogeneous and dynamic social and political space," Prof. Campbell

wrote in, "Bountiful Voices" an academic paper written earlier this year, "where at least some women are able to wield considerable authority in their marriages, families and community. Their stories thus seem inconsistent, at least to some degree, with pre-existing presumptions about polygamy and its harms for women set forth in conventional public discourse."

But their experiences vary, she noted. Older women described being married off in church style while still in their early teens, to older men not of their choosing.

"Conventionally, spouses in the FLDS church had a very short (or no) prenuptial relationship," Prof. Campbell notes in "Bountiful Voices."

"This seems to be an ongoing practice for some; one participant described meeting her husband just an hour before their marriage."

However, arranged marriages are becoming less common and monogamous marriages no longer seem exceptional in Bountiful, according to women whom Prof. Campbell interviewed last year.

Outsiders assume that men in Bountiful choose multiple wives; but in recent practice, it is the other way around, Prof. Campbell noted.

"The impropriety of men scouting for wives was noted on several occasions," she wrote in "Bountiful Voices."

One woman told her: "I don't believe that married men should date other women, or look for other wives. If a girl wants to be a plural wife, she should get to know a man's family first, and they should all have the chance to agree or disagree with the prospective addition to the family.... To me, it would seem like cheating on your wife to be out looking for another wife."

Anther woman in Bountiful dismissed the idea that "there are so many underage marriages" in the community.

"There's not. And my daughter ...I want her to be at least 20 because it feels like they're at least a little bit smarter going out to the marriage life. I was 21."

On the other hand, one woman "felt 'peer pressure' to get married as young as 16, and despite her mother's dissuasive efforts, the young woman did marry before reaching the age of majority."

By no means is Prof. Campbell's the last word on Bountiful. It is not an exhaustive study. Rather, it is "meant to initiate further questions and research regarding the connections drawn between polygamy and harm to women, which seems to drive current legal and policy understandings of plural marriage."

She says she does not favour polygamy herself. Bountiful is neither a community of horrors nor a utopia, she says. But even that runs contrary to most opinions shared outside the community.

There is "serious misconduct in Bountiful." Few seem prepared to argue with that assessment given last year by Vancouver lawyer Leonard Doust. The B. C. government appointed him to review an earlier decision not to prosecute members of the sect who practice polygamy.

Despite a reference to "abuses in Bountiful," Mr. Doust agreed with B. C. special prosecutor Richard Peck, who decided in 2007 that constitutional protections of religious freedom would complicate a prosecution there.

Mr. Doust also argued that prosecution on charges of polygamy in Bountiful would be unfair.

But following receipt of Mr. Doust's report, Wally Oppal, then the attorney-general, appointed yet another special prosecutor, who did recommend charges.

So it was that Mr. Blackmore and Mr. Oler, both of whom acknowledge multiple wives, were arrested in January and charged with polygamy.

That should not have happened, Madame Justice Stromberg-Stein ruled this week. Rather, the attorney general had to follow Mr. Peck's 2007 decision.

Instead, the attorney-general unlawfully sought another opinion. He "got the answer he publicly sought all along; that is, to prosecute," the judge ruled.

"The harm in the appointment of successive special prosecutors is that it undermines the administration of justice by leaving the perception, if not the reality, of political interference or unfair prosecution," she explained in her ruling.

From this one could interpret that B. C.'s Ministry of Attorney General has done more "harm" to society than the polygamists themselves.

Lawmakers and politicians might have this in mind as they consider what to do next. B. C.'s current Attorney-General, Mike de Jong, is considering his options.

For her part, Prof. Campbell expects the province will appeal this week's ruling, and will continue its quest to prosecute polygamists in Bountiful. Whether that is necessary, her work suggests, is another matter.

bhutchinson@nationalpost.com