The sanitizing of polygamy

Frank Stirk
BC Correspondent
bc@christianweek.org

I’m afraid the B.C. government’s decision to investigate the goings-on among the polygamists of Bountiful may turn out to be a hollow victory.

It is certainly a victory that an attorney-general is finally taking seriously the accusation that the Fundamentalist Mormon commune in the east Kootenays is, to say the least, an unhealthy environment for children and women. For years, its critics have raised alarms over rampant sexual abuse, forced “marriages" of teenaged girls to much older men, and rates of teen pregnancies and births well above the national averages. “The groundswell of public concern has reached a point where government and the police, in my view, have an obligation to act," said Attorney-General Geoff Plant.

The immediate impetus for this investigation was an eye-witness account Plant received this spring from Debbie Palmer, which she maintains is typical. She fled Bountiful in 1988, following three “marriages"—the first at age 15, when she was forced to become the sixth “wife" of a 55-year-old man—and the birth of seven children to three different fathers. But just as likely it was only the media exposure that Palmer’s story received that prompted Plant to act.

So why do I call it a hollow victory? Because since the early 1990s, successive B.C. governments have decided that if they went after the polygamists of Bountiful solely on the basis that in Canada polygamy is illegal, they would lose in court. The accused, they said, would challenge the law as an infringement on freedom of religion—and probably win.

Even in announcing this investigation, Plant was careful to point out that it was instigated solely as a result of the alleged abuses, which he said are “beyond the question of multiple marriages…If supported by the facts, these charges would have no constitutional challenge."

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association takes a similar stance. In a letter to Premier Gordon Campbell, it said that allowing the investigation to include the crime of polygamy would be “an unhelpful diversion from the other allegations at hand. The key underlying issue is not whether a man is co-habiting with more than one woman, but whether sexual or spousal abuse or exploitation is taking place."

So it is a hollow victory because the powers that be have seemingly determined that upholding the law against polygamy is not worth the effort.

To be fair to Plant, he at least acknowledges that the presence of polygamy at Bountiful must not be allowed to impede the investigation. “The fact is [the polygamy] section sits there in the Criminal Code. No court has ever struck it down. And we may have to deal with it," he said. But that is hardly a ringing condemnation of polygamy.

Why are those in authority so concerned not to infringe upon the religious freedoms of a sect whose core beliefs permit men to treat women and children like chattel?

My answer is now that Canada has all but jettisoned marriage as the union of one man and one woman, anything is possible. Free from every biblical and historical restraint, how can any “love" relationship be called illegitimate? Many see nothing wrong in allowing two men or two women to marry. But why does it have to be just two? Isn’t that discriminatory?

Make no mistake: The process of re-casting polygamy as just one in a smorgasbord of personal living arrangements is well underway. Witness Three of Hearts, a new documentary by filmmaker Susan Kaplan about the common-law “marriage" of two gay men and a heterosexual woman that eventually includes children. As a reviewer in the Toronto Star breathlessly explains, “Kaplan introduces elements, gleaned from long observations of her surprisingly open participants, that will challenge both the radical and the righteous."

Far from cracking down on the crime of having multiple spouses, I suspect what will come of the Bountiful investigation will be the sanitizing of polygamy. Abuse charges will be laid and prosecuted, the men of Bountiful will promise from now on to “marry" consenting women instead of girls, and they will again be left alone to enjoy their religious freedom.

And the law banning polygamy will be as meaningless as the law defining marriage.