On the Morality of Polygamy Law: Freedom vs Harm

Should polygamy be legal? This question is at the core of the landmark polygamy case slowly working its way up the Canadian justice system. To answer this, we look at the balance between harm and freedom. The balance in this case is contrasted to the case of gay marriage.

That restricting the ability to legally engage in polygamy is restricting freedom is obvious. That it is often a religious freedom doesn’t specifically matter to me – although as a practical matter this will be argued in court as explicitly religious freedom being infringed on – for I think that whatever the justification, if people have a desire to do something then restricting that desire is a restriction of freedom.

On the other hand, there is the potential that polygamy leads to harm. As Craig Jones, a lawyer for the BC government puts it, “all forms of polygamy contribute to the discrimination of women and the sexualization of young girls”. Now polygamy has been heavily stigmatized as well as poorly represented by the occasional – but much publicized – genuinely predatory people or in very different cultures and so it gets a perhaps poorer representation as harmful than is justified. However, for the purpose of discussion let us just accept at face value all of this alleged harm.

The result is we now have to balance these two sides. On the one side, we are restricting freedoms and on the other we are preventing harm. It should be noted that the burden of proof is firmly in the latter camp to establish harm. That polygamy is sufficiently rare in Canada that this case is just now coming up is not a sufficient reason to objectively restrict freedoms; indeed, we should attempt to never do this unless clearly justified. The harm must be clearly proven to exist otherwise we default to the position that freedom must be allowed.

However, this still isn’t sufficient. One must further demonstrate that simply restricting the alleged predatory components is not sufficient to eliminating the harm. This is important because a lot of the harm gets conflated in this way. Is the problem consulting adults engaging in polygamy or sex with young girls, because the latter is illegal and polygamy laws don’t change that.

My view is that it should be legal. Polygamy has a very large cultural stigma that is impeding the legal freedom of people to marry how they choose. The alleged harm it does I think is both overstated and not at all obvious that restricting polygamy is fixing the specific problems we wish to address.

All of this has an interesting consideration with respect to gay marriage which has the same background of a cultural stigma and then an argument of freedom versus harm. With gay marriage however the alleged harm was very tenuous at best. People have argued things like that it breaks down the family unit, is bad for kids etc etc yet these statements have been proven wrong in study after study. Even if one falsely believes in a net harm, the freedom trumps the harm almost regardless; I don’t care how much harm gay couples might do it is still the right thing to do for them to have the right to marry. Even if the studies were wrong and one could demonstrate a small difference between, say, gay and straight parents as aggregates, the enormous diversity within either populations would utterly dominate this difference and allowing gay marriage is still unequivocally the right thing to do.

Returning to polygamy, we can learn something from the gay rights struggle. We can learn how this tactic of claiming harm to restrict freedom has been used before and proven false. We can learn how activities that are stigmatized as socially deviant get attacked on the basis of unjustified harm. We can deduce that thus is more than likely the case here as well and hence that we should support polygamy. I accept the framing of harm vs freedom for this is the framing by which we should consider all government impositions on freedom (such as locking up murderers, say) but what I don’t accept is that the balance in this case is on the ‘harm’ side.

 

The polygamy reference case has already made a valuable contribution: It has focused the debate on the question of harm. Apologists for the current law are now having to try to show that polygamy, in and of itself, always and necessarily hurts people. I don’t believe they’re succeeding, but I do see this as a promising first step toward creating a rational and effective legal strategy for dealing with abuse in polygamous communities.

Modern law — and modern secular ethics, which defaults to some version of the Golden Rule — is heavily influenced by the principle articulated by philosopher John Stuart Mill: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

That’s not to say there aren’t Canadian laws that have little to do with protecting individuals from harm; the polygamy law is one of them. But the modern proponents of the law know they have to work harm in somewhere, or the law risks being struck down, because courts these days tend to be very reluctant to tell consenting adults what they can do in their own bedrooms.

So the proponents argue the law is necessary to prevent associated harms.

Crown counsel Craig Jones tried to cover all the philosophical bases he could, and made a fine mess in the process, saying the law must be upheld to confirm the government’s right to “impose some fundamental codes of moral behaviour for the protection of the vulnerable and to promote and advance our highest aspirations of equality and social justice.” The “protection of the vulnerable” bit is in there to make John Stuart Mill happy.

The harms to be prevented include forced marriage, rape of young girls, expulsion of young men, and unequal family dynamics.

Forced marriage and rape are already illegal.

I’ve read the argument that we need the polygamy law because the police and Crown aren’t enforcing other, sounder laws at their disposal that prevent forced marriage, or child abuse.

It’s true that it can be difficult for victims to testify against abusers who are in authority over them.

That’s true outside of polygamous contexts as well, and it’s something the justice system must work to overcome, without requiring the clumsy workaround of an extra law that allows the state to keep one small but irksome peephole into the nation’s bedrooms.

If some jerk who lives in a polygamous commune, or some other fundamentalist society, has only one wife, and she’s 13, and he hits and rapes her and tells her to shut up and keep sweet — well, all of that is illegal and should be prosecuted, even though the 13-year-old might be brainwashed and terrified. But you tell me how a polygamy law can help that girl.

Many laws, the polygamy law included, sometimes require the co-operation of victims. It’s worth noting that the polygamy law is rarely enforced and has not prevented any of the harms we’re all talking about.

The polygamy law manages to be both overreaching in principle (criminalizing consensual behaviour) and inadequate in practice (it hasn’t stopped the abuse it supposedly targets).

As for unequal family arrangements, that’s a more difficult question.

If we make polygamy illegal because, most of the time, polygamous unions involve patriarchal gender roles, are we also going to make patriarchal gender roles illegal in monogamous unions? If so, we’re going to have to build a lot more prisons.

The relevant question, for the law, is not the number of people in the relationship, but whether they’re adults who have freely consented. If the women in relationships of any number are being compelled or detained — well, again, there are laws against that, and they ought to be enforced. And it’s going to take hard work to get those women to come forward and seek help, polygamy law or no polygamy law.

If we Canadians decide to uphold the polygamy law — by, for example, telling our representatives to use Section 33 of the Charter — we’ll be guilty of shrugging off the harm principle when it seems inconvenient.

Which principles, then, will form the basis of our law? In the absence of secular liberalism, which culture or religion gets to impose its sexual morality on the rest of us?

That’s why it’s important to strike down this law, and replace it with a sound legal strategy to enforce existing laws, to put abusers behind bars without incidentally criminalizing consensual sexual behaviour.

This case tests our willingness to tolerate needless exceptions to the principle that the government can only compel our behaviour when that behaviour affects other people.

At the core, this case isn’t about freedom of religion, or freedom of association. It’s about freedom, full stop.

Kate Heartfield is a member of the Citizen’s editorial board.

Link to article

Law is Cool Podcast: Polygamy and the Law

Also, check out one of the significant comments from that podcast…

ShermanP on February 15th, 2009 5:48 pm
Don Morgan, Saskatchewan Attorney General,Canada, allows Polygamy, which is against Federal Criminal code law(he does not report his own alleged Criminal code violation of the law, which wouled be to assist in the creation of Polygamous relationships, consenting for unwilling victims etc.)to RCMP):
Two members of a Mormon splinter group were charged recently with practicing Polygamy in Bountiful, British Columbia, Canada. On has claimed religious persecution by government.
The federal Criminal Code of Canada states:
S. 293. Everyone who
(a) practices or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practice
or enter into
(i) any form of polygamy
(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same
time, whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage,
or
(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or
consent that purports to sanction a relationship [that is polygamous]
is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term
not exceeding five years.”
This section is very general, capturing formal and informal arrangements.
It captures cohabitation as well as marriage; and it encompasses
both heterosexual and same sex relationships.
However, that has changed now and Polygamy is legal in at least one Canadian province. Indeed, two different Attorney Generals of that province and at least four Family Court (Queens Bench) justices have commented and argued in public court cases that a married woman may also have same time conjugal unions. Don Morgan of the Saskatchewan Party, who is also Don Morgan Attorney General of Saskatchewan and its’ Justice Minister has commented that Saskatchewan legislation allows multiple conjugal unions and that persons do not need to formally end a marriage to be legally recognized as having other legal spouses in Saskatchewan. His argument is the same as his predecessor Attorney General. Basically, Section 51 of Saskatchewan Marital Family property Act states:
“Rights of new spouse
51 Where a person becomes the spouse of a person who has a spouse, the rights
pursuant to this Act of the subsequent spouse are subject to the rights pursuant to
this Act of the prior spouse.”
As early as 1999 and again in 2009 different Queens bench judges have ruled that a married woman may also legally have other conjugal partners under the laws of Saskatchewan. They contend that this does not violate the Federal Criminal code that clearly does not allow plural conjugal unions to exist at same time. In both cases Saskatchewan Attorney General representatives appeared to argue in favor of multiple conjugal unions and in both cases the Federal Attorney Generals declined to appear to defend Canada’s Polygamy law.
Canada’s Immigration rules do not allow potential immigrants to be both married and also claim another spouse, either as a cohabitation spouse or married.
The case of Ariza v. Canada (2007) denied entry to Canada to a Muslim who might have claimed to have a wife in the Philippines and a common law cohabitant wife in Canada concurrently. The summary can be found at canlii.org under Ariza V. canada.
Summary is:
“[8] Further, as the appellant lives in Canada and has lived in Canada on a continual basis since 1992, and the applicant lives in the Philippines, there is no factual basis upon which to entertain the possibility that this relationship could be saved under a different classification, such as the concept of common-law marriage. The other concept created in the law in 2002 having to do with conjugal partnership is also of no help, as a conjugal relationship needs to be, by definition, an exclusive relationship. It is not open to the appellant to claim that she is in an exclusive relationship with the applicant, where he is still involved in a legal marriage with his first wife.”
Now, The persons charged with Polygamy in Bountiful (a different town/ province in Canada)are accused of practicing Polygamy in Canada. On two fronts. One, having more than one spouse at the same time. Second, providing consent and assistance to the formation of simultaneous conjugal unions as “bishops” of the sect.
One must query why Don Morgan as Justice Minister of Saskatchewan, in a province a short distance away from British Columbia provides unilateral consent and assists with allowing multiple conjugal unions as valid under Saskatchewan law, yet British Columbia Attorney General does not allow Polygamy; are the Attorney Generals reading the same Federal law?
In the case of Saskatchewan Polygamy, two married women claimed to have a legal conjugal relationship with other men while still legally married. Both men denied this and said they just lived in the same house with the married women and hence had the right to not be legal spouses while the women were married to others. They argued they had the constitutional right to not be the spouse of a person that already had a spouse and they be entitled to live under a “shacked up” but not legally the spouse of a married person”. Don Morgan of the Saskatchewan Party and his constitutional lawyers argued that the women were entitled to have another spouse under Saskatchewan law, even tho they remained married to another. Morgan believes that people do not need to formally end a marriage to take other spouses. In Winik V. Saskatchewan trustee, the Queens bench judge ruled:
“21] With respect to the first issue, the continuing marriage of Maureen Winik would not necessarily have hindered the formation of a common-law relationship with Randy Wilson. The formation of a common-law relationship does not involve the solemnization of a marriage. Rather it requires a mutual intention to enter into a permanent and exclusive matrimonial relationship”
“To constitute a marriage valid at common law, that is, in the absence of a statute otherwise specifically providing, it is not necessary that it should be solemnized in any particular form or with any particular rite or ceremony. All that is required is that there should be an actual and mutual agreement to enter into a matrimonial relation, permanent and exclusive of all others, between parties capable in law of making such a contract, consummated by their cohabitation as man and wife or other mutual assumption openly of marital duties and obligations.”
“As the formation of a common-law relationship does not require the solemnization of a marriage, there is no risk of violating the criminal sanction against bigamy. The formation of a common-law relationship is not hindered by the existence of a subsisting marriage. Mutual intention of the parties consummated by their conduct, perhaps with an expressive public component, is all that is required for the formation of the relationship.”
The judge decided to make formal and legal the subsequent spousal relationship unilaterally ( providing consent and assisting)as follows:
“[40] Maureen Winik, as the common-law spouse of Randy Wilson at the time of his decease, has standing to challenge the constitutional validity of the relevant provisions of the Act.”
Interestingly, the judge may have determined the new spouses had an exclusive and monogamous relationship, despite the fact that Winik was married and the man had also fathered a child with a different women during their cohabitation!
You can read the case and decide for yourself.
The question is, if it is illegal in Canada to have plural spouses in valid constitutional law, and Don Morgan and his Saskatchewan party allow same time multiple conjugal unions, why does British Columbia charge Bountiful members who have done no more? Since Osler and Blackmore (Bountiful) are charged under the Federal Criminal Code Section 293 with having multiple conjugal relations and also performing multiple conjugal relationship consent by sanctioning plural unions, why aren’t the Saskatchewan Attorney Generals and Saskatchewan Queens Bench judges also charged with creating these plural conjugal relationships under law and assisting and consenting to them?
It seems apparent that the Bountiful residents, Muslim immigrants and others wishing to practice Polygamy in Canada will need to live in Saskatchewan Canada to have legal Polygamous unions.
Some other provinces in Canada allow multiple conjugal unions if they occurred in a place that allows them. Immigrants must prove their place of origin does allow Polygamy. Since Saskatchewan Canada allows simultaneous conjugal unions it seems unfair that Muslims and others are persecuted for their Polygamist religious beliefs when it is perfectly legal in parts of Canada. Charge them all or charge none as the saying goes! Who will charge Don Morgan and his family court judges?

]]> http://merrywives.org/2010/11/11/polygamy-and-the-law/feed/ 0 e1guapo http://merrywives.org/2010/09/04/2010-nova-conference/ http://merrywives.org/2010/09/04/2010-nova-conference/#comments Sat, 04 Sep 2010 16:49:32 +0000 concernedmom http://merrywives.org/?p=467 ]]> Kirk Torgenson with the Utah Attorney General’s Office gave a presentation about “Polygamy Victimization” at this year’s NOVA Conference.  We do not have the transcript from his presentation but Brooke Adams’ blog gave us some information about what he talked about.

The following exceprt is from her blog:

Kirk Torgensen, chief deputy in the Utah Attorney General’s Office, spoke Tuesday at the National Organization For Victim Assistance conference, being held in Salt Lake City.

His topic? “Polygamy Victimization.”

Former plural wife Carolyn Jessop also spoke. More on her in the next post. But here is a recap of what Torgensen had to say.

He credited Carolyn for opening his eyes — even changing his life — to what was going in in the twin towns of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz.

Think about a world in which young girls are raised with very little freedom and, when they reach 13 or 14 or 15, are told by a prophet to marry a much older man because “it’s just the way it is,” Torgensen said.

In the twin towns, young people don’t have the freedom, the constitutional right, to live the way they want to, he said.

Click here to read the entire blog entry.

Here is the Centennial Park Action Committee’s response:

This is a statement from the Centennial Park Action Committee. Any comments or questions can be forwarded to cpac@cpaz.net

Last week there was a conference in Salt Lake City put on by NOVA- the National Organization of Victim Assistance. Kirk Torgensen, Chief Deputy, Mark Shurtleff’s right hand man in the Utah AGs office, was the lead speaker for a presentation on “Polygamy Victimization.”

Mr Torgensen’s presentation was very disappointing, filled as it was with a rhetoric and bias that seemed more fitting of a time BEFORE the thousands of hours spent building bridges by the Attorney General’s office, Safety Net, and countless organizations and individual people. So many people have made a concerted effort to reach out to allay the mistrust and fear that comes from misunderstanding one another. We are surprised, considering Mr. Torgensen’s position as a public servant, by his willingness to jeopardize this work and to further marginalize people who were not there to speak for themselves.

Mr. Torgensen talked about “by their fruits you will know them.” We have hoped that our fruits have shown us to be sincere and willing to engage in this bridge-building dialogue. We have worked to open our lives that we might replace the stereotypes with truth, the suspicion with cooperation. We readily acknowledge that we started this project with doubts and a measure of our own bias. We have appreciated getting to know the many people who have worked on our behalf to bring services to our community, who have put aside their uncertainties to truly listen to us, and who have had a genuine interest in our wellbeing. If we have not said it clearly enough before, “Thank you.” We value these blessings.

Frankly, we feel that Mr. Torgensen’s presentation highlights a lack in our efforts to reach out and educate individuals and officials on the nature of our lives and culture. When we hear elected officials continue to encourage others to participate in the prejudice, we struggle to not slide back into the cautions and concerns of yesteryears. Openness begins to feel like exposure and vulnerability. So we invite Mr. Torgensen to let us know what we can do to alleviate his concerns and hope that in the future he will use a more even-handed approach to discussions he holds under the auspice of his public duties.

]]> http://merrywives.org/2010/09/04/2010-nova-conference/feed/ 0 concernedmom http://merrywives.org/2009/01/23/polygamy-court-case-shines-spotlight-on-crestons-divisions/ http://merrywives.org/2009/01/23/polygamy-court-case-shines-spotlight-on-crestons-divisions/#comments Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:08:10 +0000 natalie http://merrywives.wordpress.com/?p=241 ]]> Photograph by: Ian Smith, Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Polygamy+court+case+shines+spotlight+Creston+divisions/1199308/story.html

CRESTON — The practice of polygamy sets neighbour against neighbour, parent against child, politician against politician and even some husbands against wives in this southeastern B.C. town.

It’s not that townsfolk here are polygamists. But Creston’s proximity to the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful, where some men unabashedly have more than one wife, makes it a more frequent topic than most would like.

Wednesday, the spotlight will be on it again.

Two of the Bountiful’s leaders will be in court for the first time since having been charged earlier this month with practising polygamy, a criminal offence that carries a penalty of up to five years in jail.

Winston Blackmore, 52, is charged with having had conjugal relations with 19 women. James Oler, 44, is charged with having two “wives.”

Both have polygamy as a tenet of their beliefs and family trees so intertwined that you need a flow chart. But the enmity between the two and their followers is even greater than the divide in town.

Nothing more starkly illustrates the town’s and maybe even the country’s divide over polygamy than Blackmore’s defence team. It includes Blair Suffredine, the former Liberal MLA for Nelson-Creston, who during his single term had several meetings with local activists who urged him to do something about Bountiful.

“It’s an interesting complication,” Suffredine said Tuesday. “But it’s not a conflict of interest. My time as an MLA gave me a good opportunity to see both sides of the issue.”

After meeting with constituents who complained about Bountiful, Suffredine says he met with Blackmore, who responded “in a very positive way.”

But news that the former MLA was working for Blackmore shocked and infuriated Linda Price and Audrey Vance, co-chairs of a local group called Altering Destiny Through Education.

They’ve spent the last five years lobbying politicians, including Suffredine, to tighten the rules for two taxpayer-supported schools at Bountiful, investigate allegations of child brides, sexual exploitation, human trafficking and polygamy and prosecute the leaders.

“I feel betrayed,” Price said Tuesday. “He must have been slapping Winston’s back or Winston was slapping his back and we didn’t realize it.”

They recalled meetings with Suffredine and how he had told them that he thought prosecuting polygamists was a waste of money because the polygamy law was unconstitutional.

Vance says it helps explain why it has taken so long for charges to be laid.

“Too many of the people in this community were good friends of Winston Blackmore,” Vance said.

But Price says, it’s an indication of how opinion divides here. “I think quite often it’s men against women. . . Women realize what’s going on and men say ‘Leave them alone, they’re nice hard-working people, leave them alone.’”

Acting mayor Wesly Graham calls the people from Bountiful “good neighbours. We have good relations. We interact with them in town.”

But when it comes to the question of polygamy, he admits it is such an explosive topic that the town council is trying to stay neutral.

Its official position is that the mayor and councillors believe it will be a landmark case on the issue of religious freedom and that they hope that the justice system will bring some clarity to the law.

Neutrality is a big change. For years, the town council adopted the live-and-let-live view. It was only a few years ago after more reports of underage girls becoming plural wives to older men, that former mayor Joe Snopek backed calls for an investigation and even prosecution.

But John Kettle, the local representative on the regional district and the chairman of the hospital board, supported Suffredine financially and remains an outspoken defender of Blackmore’s right to practise polygamy as part of his religion.

That sure doesn’t reflect the views of a cluster of residents outside the Creston movie theatre Monday night. They questioned whether the equality rights of women and children are being upheld in Bountiful.

They raised concerns that close to $1 million worth of B.C. tax dollars go into the schools and yet few from Bountiful ever graduate from high school.

They wanted to know why Canada’s anti-polygamy law isn’t being upheld and why some legal experts are suggesting that there should be different laws for different groups in Canada.

Of course, they had just watched Bill Maher’s Religulous. The timing of the one-night run of the comic-documentary questioning all beliefs and faiths was serendipitous, but the approaching Blackmore-Oler court appearance might have helped account for the full house and some of the big laughs.

As divided as Creston may be, it is nothing compared to Bountiful.

Until 2002, Blackmore was the bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Oler replaced him after Blackmore left the group, fed up with the increasingly draconian diktats and apocalyptic revelations coming from the FLDS prophet.

Blackmore was subsequently excommunicated and took about half of Bountiful’s 1,000 residents with him. Since then, FLDS followers have shunned Blackmore and his followers, warned that even talking to them could put their own salvation at risk.

All of which makes any kind of joint defence highly unlikely.

In fact, with ongoing and impending litigation facing jailed FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs and leaders in two states, and trials set to begin soon for nine other church leaders in Texas, Oler and the FLDS might be quite content to let Blackmore lead an expensive constitutional battle, chiming in only when it suits their interests.

]]> http://merrywives.org/2009/01/23/polygamy-court-case-shines-spotlight-on-crestons-divisions/feed/ 0 natalie http://merrywives.org/2009/01/09/this-polygamy-story-has-barely-started/ http://merrywives.org/2009/01/09/this-polygamy-story-has-barely-started/#comments Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:19:52 +0000 natalie http://merrywives.wordpress.com/?p=232 ]]> http://www.canada.com/victoriatimescolonist/news/comment/story.html?id=9d20913a-67e3-4329-8738-7a1d2a6f16d8&p=2

If nothing else, Attorney General Wally Oppal’s dogged pursuit of the Bountiful religious sect’s leaders has resulted in some of the oddest bail conditions ever imposed in B.C.

Winston Blackmore, leader of one faction in the commune, was released yesterday on condition that he stop getting married until the polygamy issue is sorted out.

He’s reputed to have 20 wives, and he’s going to have to make do with the status quo for a while until the charge laid against him is resolved.

Which will probably take years, if the decades-long history of the B.C. government’s handling of this case is any indication.

Most of that history has been characterized by a hands-off approach where authorities looked the other way and maintained a scrupulous lack of interest in the remote Kootenay valley where middle-aged men routinely marry multiple women, many of them teenage girls.

Growing unease with that peculiar lifestyle led to an official look-see a few years ago. But even after a thorough investigation, the government was warned numerous times to tread lightly.

At least six prosecutors — four in-house Crown counsel and two independents — have looked deeply into the case over the past few years and recommended against charges. Mostly it’s because the criminalization of polygamy appears to conflict with the Bountiful commune’s right to religious freedom.

But Oppal has insisted on pressing on.

After the four senior Crown counsel recommended against laying charges, the attorney general hired lawyer Richard Peck to review the case again. He considered every sex and marriage-related offence in the Criminal Code and was unable to find one that would result in a substantial likelihood of conviction.

He recommended instead appealing to the courts for a reference ruling on the validity of the polygamy law, in relation to the charter of rights.

“My view is that the public interest will best be served by an authoritative and expeditious judicial resolution of the legal controversy surrounding polygamy.”

His idea was that if the 120-year-old polygamy law is declared unconstitutional, then the federal government would have to draft a new law that is compliant. And if the polygamy law was upheld, then Bountiful would have fair notice their practice must cease.

Unsatisfied with that road map, Oppal retained lawyer Leonard Doust to draw up another one.

But Doust last year arrived at the same conclusions. “A reference rather than a prosecution is the most appropriate way to proceed at this time.”

“It is not an attempt to dodge or delay dealing with the problems in Bountiful. On the contrary, it is the swiftest, most effective and fairest way of beginning to address them,” Doust wrote.

He went even further, stating that while a prosecution might “superficially carry the appearance of engagement, I believe that it likely represents a much slower route to a real solution, if it is a viable route at all.”

Oppal rejected that opinion as well, and promptly ordered up a third outside look, this time by lawyer Terrence Robertson.

He was named special prosecutor last June and given full authority over how the case was to be handled. It was his decision that led to yesterday’s arrest of Blackmore and a co-accused.

After three tries, Oppal has finally found a lawyer who agrees with him.

The attorney general candidly acknowledged that’s the only difference.

“Nothing has really changed as far as the evidence from 2007 is concerned,” he said.

Oppal is no legal dummy. He’s a longtime lawyer and former judge, with his own views on how to proceed. He told reporters yesterday: “Having been on the court of appeal, I can tell you that courts do not like to decide cases in a vacuum, without the presence of facts or evidence.”

If the government had followed the reference route, he raised the prospect of the courts declining to hear it, which would just lengthen the stall.

So they’re going the other route, laying charges based on evidence alleging that Blackmore is a practising polygamist.

Oppal called it the “conventional” approach. But there’s nothing conventional about ignoring two special prosecutors’ recommendations, and then proceeding entirely independently of the criminal justice branch, which has more or less washed its hands of this matter.

He could still win the day, after a lengthy legal war in which everything from the Bible to the charge approval requirements will be dragged into the fray.

But if he loses, the end result could be the complete decriminalization of polygamy for the foreseeable future.

Either way, Blackmore will likely be in a holding pattern for several years to come.

]]> http://merrywives.org/2009/01/09/this-polygamy-story-has-barely-started/feed/ 0 natalie http://merrywives.org/2009/01/09/2-leaders-of-polygamist-group-arrested-in-canada/ http://merrywives.org/2009/01/09/2-leaders-of-polygamist-group-arrested-in-canada/#comments Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:18:53 +0000 natalie http://merrywives.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/2-leaders-of-polygamist-group-arrested-in-canada/ ]]> http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8DHElciOy_DHCfRLx9CyvuwnP1gD95IHKMO0

VANCOUVER, British Columbia (AP) — Two top leaders of a polygamous community in western Canada have been arrested and charged with practicing polygamy, British Columbia’s attorney general said Wednesday.

Attorney General Wally Oppal said Winston Blackmore is charged with marrying 20 women, while James Oler is accused of marrying two women.

“This has been a very complex issue,” Oppal said. “It’s been with us for well over 20 years.”

Blackmore, long known as “the Bishop of Bountiful,” runs an independent sect of about 400 members in the town of Bountiful. He once ran the Canadian arm of the Utah-based Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but was ejected in 2003 by that group’s leader, Warren Jeffs.

Oler is the bishop of Bountiful’s FLDS community loyal to Jeffs. Even though many of the town’s residents are related or have same last name, followers of the two leaders are splintered and are not allowed to talk with each other.

FLDS members practice polygamy in arranged marriages, a tradition tied to the early theology of the Mormon church. Mormons renounced polygamy in 1890 as a condition of Utah’s statehood.

Last June, Oppal appointed a special prosecutor to look into allegations of criminal abuse at Bountiful despite two earlier legal opinions that said it would be difficult to proceed with criminal charges for polygamy itself.

Blackmore openly acknowledges having numerous wives and dozens of children but has said his community abhors sexual abuse of children.

Oppal said some legal experts believe polygamy charges won’t withstand a constitutional challenge in Canada over the issue of freedom of religion.

“I’ve always taken the position that’s a valid offense in law,” Oppal said. “And if someone says that it’s contrary to their religion, let a judge make that decision.”

The FLDS, with an estimated 10,000 members, is headquartered in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. In 1947, a small group moved just across the border into Lister, British Columbia. The newcomers dubbed the pristine spot at the base of a snowy mountain range Bountiful.

Besides an estimated 1,000 Canadians living in Bountiful, the U.S. Embassy estimates there are about 300 Americans there who are loyal to Blackmore and 200 others who follow Jeffs, who is in jail awaiting trial in Arizona on four counts of being an accomplice to sexual conduct with a minor.

]]> http://merrywives.org/2009/01/09/2-leaders-of-polygamist-group-arrested-in-canada/feed/ 0 natalie http://merrywives.org/2008/08/18/how-arizonas-polygamis-raid-paved-the-way-to-texas/ http://merrywives.org/2008/08/18/how-arizonas-polygamis-raid-paved-the-way-to-texas/#comments Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:57:16 +0000 libertytoo http://merrywives.wordpress.com/?p=63 ]]> Republic researcher Joanne Dawson contributed to this story to the Arizona Republic.

It’s hard to see your way in polygamist country, always has been. The nights are dark, and street lamps rare or absent altogether. The people prefer to be guided by God’s light, leaning on the moon and stars to show the way.

The first time the children were taken, in the summer of 1953, police crept into town beneath an eclipsed moon. A trail of sedans bounced over the muddy road from Fredonia to Short Creek, Ariz., with headlights dimmed. Their mission hinged on surprising the polygamists before they could flee. Overhead, a full moon glowed with a ruddy red light then faded slowly into the Earth’s shadow.

The airwaves hummed in the dark. Ham-radio operators were carrying messages from Gov. Howard Pyle to the police and relaying news from Short Creek’s sheriff to the Arizona attorney general. Pyle had vowed to shatter the serenity of Short Creek, where nary a girl had reached age 15 “without having been forced into a shameful mockery of marriage,” he said.

To Continue Story, Click the Link.

]]> http://merrywives.org/2008/08/18/how-arizonas-polygamis-raid-paved-the-way-to-texas/feed/ 1 libertytoo http://merrywives.org/2008/08/01/natalie-malonis-atty-for-warren-jeffs-daughter/ http://merrywives.org/2008/08/01/natalie-malonis-atty-for-warren-jeffs-daughter/#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:38:04 +0000 merrywives http://merrywives.wordpress.com/?p=42 ]]> Donald Richter at TruthWillPrevail.com has some interesting information about Natalie Malonis and her mental state.  It presents a side of the story that has not yet been told.  After reading it, it leaves one wondering why on earth she is allowed to practice law – especially on behalf of a minor.

]]> http://merrywives.org/2008/08/01/natalie-malonis-atty-for-warren-jeffs-daughter/feed/ 0 merrywives http://merrywives.org/2008/08/01/flora-jessops-help/ http://merrywives.org/2008/08/01/flora-jessops-help/#comments Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:34:15 +0000 merrywives http://merrywives.wordpress.com/?p=40 ]]> As anyone who reads the newspapers or watches TV knows, Flora Jessop claims to “help” people “escape” from polygamy.  Here is an account of one such instance of her “help.”  It is a little different than the version she gave to the media…

]]> http://merrywives.org/2008/08/01/flora-jessops-help/feed/ 0 merrywives