At last – Canada acts against polygamy
In British Columbia, charges of polygamy have been laid against two leaders of a fundamentalist Mormon community where “celestial marriage” has long been a religious practice.
The issue has bedevilled authorities in B.C. for more than forty years. Canada’s law on polygamy is clear, but the adherents of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints have never — until now — been charged with breaking that law.
The men charged are Winston Blackmore, 55, a former bishop of the church in Bountiful, and James Oler, 44, the current bishop. Bountiful is a religious community of about 1,200 people, near the town of Creston, B.C .
(Creston happens to be my hometown, so I’ve always watched this issue with special interest.)
Blackmore was ousted from his post by the FLDS leader in the States, Warren Jeffs, but he has continued as head of the Mormon Hills School, which receives public funding from the B.C. Department of Education. (Jeffs is currently in prison for rape.)
It’s about time that Canada’s polygamy law is being enforced. For years, cautious politicians and skeptical lawyers have feared that a court might throw out the law, on the grounds that it infringes on religious freedom. If that were to happen, polygamy would suddenly become legal in Canada.
This seems to be a risk that the B.C. Attorney General, Wally Oppal, is prepared to take.
I talked to Oppal two years ago when I was preparing a report for The National Post. I wrote from the perspective of someone who had grown up in the Creston area, and had watched families and their children live under the the hard rules of their male-dominated church.
Elsie, one of Blackmore’s more than 100 children. Photo: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
In my article for The Post, I wrote:
“Few Canadians care today about the sexual proclivities of their neighbors. They do care, however, about brain washing of young girls in fundamentalist Mormon communities who are coerced into entering multiple marriages as a religious obligation.”
It’s worth noting that today’s charges do not involve child abuse. This might be because of the difficulty of securing witnesses to such charges. Instead, they simply allege Blackmore and Oler to be guilty of practising polygamy – cohabitating with more than one person at a time, whether or not they’ve gone through a form of marriage.
The indictment against Blackmore says he practised polygamy in 2005 with 19 women — Oler, with two women.
Women who have crusaded against Bountiful’s sorry record of polygamy — many of them former residents of the community — are overjoyed that the authorities are at last taking action.
Still, laying charges is not the same as obtaining a c onviction. But Oppal is obviously confident of guilty findings. It shouldn’t be hard to prove whether these men have cohabitated with more than one woman at a time.
They’ll probably admit they’ve done so. Then they’ll fall back on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, claiming polygamy as a religious right.
There are a lot of things more important than the right to practice abusive lifestyles in the guise of religious freedom.
There’s one thing we shouldn’t lose sight of. Polygamy is Canada is practiced not just in Bountiful. There are thousands of polygamous unions being carried on right now across Canada, mainly among Muslim immigrant families.
If the Bountiful prosecution is successful, will authorities in other places — like Toronto and Montreal — have the courage to take action against these illegal unions?
Or will Parliament someday opt to change the law to accommodate yet another lifestyle variation — providing a way can be found to ensure the protection of multiple wives and minor children?
Read Winston Blackmore’s statement here.
