Editorial: From Canadian Newspaper on Bountiful Polygamy

http://www.timescolonist.com/life/fears+fascination+with+polygamy/214133...

Our fears and fascination with polygamy
By Iain Hunter, Times Colonist October 24, 2009

People have a fascination with, sometimes amounting to a fear of, the unknown.

Recently we've been fascinated with what goes on in Bountiful. It can be perceived of as a latter-day Garden of Eden, or as a moral cesspit that modern society can tolerate no longer.

It seems as if we're about to find out what it is. The provincial government is asking the B.C. Supreme Court if, in its "opinion," the Criminal Code of Canada's prohibition of polygamy is still constitutionally valid now that the Charter of Rights governs so much of our lives.

If it still is, the government wants the court to say what elements are necessary for a polygamous offence -- must it involve a minor or occur in the context of things like dependence, exploitation or abuse of authority?

Attorney General Mike de Jong says he believes "polygamy is against the law." Federal Justice Minister Rob Nicholson has declared that "the practice of polygamy has no place in modern Canadian society."

Yet after 17 years Winston Blackmore has got well past the practising stage. He has performed polygamy in full knowledge of those who are supposed to enforce the law, and might be excused in thinking they didn't mind.

Former attorney general Wally Oppal finally summoned up the official courage this year to charge Blackmore and another polygamist.

A Supreme Court justice tossed the case out because she decided Oppal had been "shopping" inappropriately for a special prosecutor until he found one who would do his will.

The first two hadn't thought a prosecution would stand. They recommended a reference to the B.C. Court of Appeal for an opinion on the constitutionality of the code's prohibition. The judge said Oppal should have stuck with the first special prosecutor's advice to go the reference route.

I don't know why the top law officer of the province must be constrained by the first piece of advice he gets on how to do what he feels is his duty, but there it is.

So we're back with the reference, which de Jong claims will deal with the issue quicker and at less cost. Fat chance.

Whatever a Supreme Court justice decides can still be appealed, like any other judgment, to the appeal court and eventually, to the Supreme Court of Canada. All kinds of witnesses with an interest in the matter will demand to be heard. Every provincial government might want to intervene.

And no court is likely to be swayed by a declaration, like that of Nicholson, that polygamy "has no place" in a society that accepts same-sex marriage, adultery and who knows what other variations on a very old theme.

Polygamy was made a crime in Canada when Sir John A. was prime minister specifically to outlaw Mormon practices found distasteful. Now, not only fundamentalist breakaway groups from this faith, but a considerable number of Muslims have polygamous unions.

Three-quarters of the blogs I've seen on this issue seem to accept polygamy as none of anyone else's business, but are vehemently opposed to old men having sex with underage girls, whether married or not.

As for the supposed degradation of women in all this, I don't find it impossible that those who enter, or remain in a polygamous union, do so willingly.

And if it's a matter of faith that they "raise up seed" so that their shared husband can get to the celestial kingdom, can they be contemptuously dismissed as brainwashed?

There are reports that not all unions in Bountiful are polygamous, that women are polygamating later in life, that they don't just darn socks and churn butter -- even that two wives celestially joined to one man are married, legally, to one another. Yet rumours of rape, subjugation and child abuse circulate still.

Now, with the evidence of witnesses that a reference to the Appeal Court would not allow, but one to the Supreme Court does, we may discover the real Bountiful.

And then, we may leave it alone, again.

cruachan@shaw.ca