ChristianWeek

VICTORIA, BC—Christian family advocates are cautiously optimistic that a likely constitutional reference to the British Columbia Court of Appeal of Canada's 117-year-old law banning polygamy will not open the door to legalized plural marriages.

Vancouver lawyer Richard Peck recommended going this route in a recent report to Attorney General Wally Oppal. Oppal had hired him to study the evidence gathered by the RCMP involving the alleged sexual abuse and exploitation of the women and children of Bountiful, a Fundamentalist Mormon commune near the Utah border.

Peck ruled out laying any criminal charges since it seemed none of the women were willing to testify that they had been forced into arranged conjugal unions.

At issue in any court reference would be whether or not banning polygamy violates Charter guarantees of freedom of religion. For more than 20 years B.C. has hesitated to move against Bountiful out of concern the law forbidding polygamy could be struck down.

But Bill Gairdner, author of The War Against the Family, doubts even the most activist judges would go as far as allowing polygamy—though not because they necessarily considered the lifestyle immoral.

"It would be too much...and also too soon on the heels of the whole gay [marriage] thing," he says. "They don't want to be seen...as bringing down the entire structure of family life in Canada by sanctioning polygamy."

Gairdner suspects the B.C. appeal court—and likely the Supreme Court of Canada afterwards—would rule that the law prohibiting polygamy is indeed offensive to religious freedom, but then declare it to be nonetheless a "reasonable limit" on the exercise of that freedom.

"I think they would probably argue in the gay marriage situation, there's no abuse potential...but in the polygamy case, there is," he says.

Ruth Ross, executive director of the Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF), agrees. "There are a lot of things we could say our religion allows us to do, but we also have other laws in place that limit us," she says.

Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, believes a strong social justice argument could be made in support of keeping polygamy in the Criminal Code that trumps any religious issues.

"Polygamous marriage, from the research that I have seen, is not in the best interest of children and women," he says. "[A wife's desire] to have the undivided attention of one husband just flies in the face of a polygamous relationship."

But given the speed with which Canada abandoned the traditional definition of marriage, Ross warns the same could happen with polygamy.

"Historically, we have seen the goalposts get moved," she says. "In 1999 and 2000, our Parliament said that in no way would they consider redefining marriage—and then in five years they were basically proponents of redefining marriage."

Those goalposts could already be moving. In January, the Ontario Court of Appeal ruled that a five-year-old boy could have three legal parents—his biological father and mother plus her lesbian partner.

A coalition comprising the CLF, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, REAL Women of Canada, the Catholic Civil Rights League and Focus on the Family Canada have asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of the case. If it refuses, the Ontario appeal court's decision will become by default the law of the land.

"Where is the dividing point then?" asks Ross. "How can we say to a polygamous family, 'You can't establish your family according to what you feel is in the best interests of your family?'"

"It's the thin edge of the wedge," says Gairdner. "Canada will be having endless cases like these as the years roll by."

"This is a good time and place," says Quist, "that elected politicians should be examining whether the existing laws are being upheld sufficiently, or require an evaluation and perhaps a tightening-up, or even new law [is needed] that specifically bans polygamous relationships."