Dismantling The Saw About Polygamy and SGM

I see that a former Supreme Court Justice has a very similar take on the polygamy issue to what I have published on this blog before:

Claire L'Heureux-Dube, a retired Supreme Court of Canada justice, does not buy the argument that polygamy should be allowed in Canada in the name of freedom of religion.

"It is contrary to the equality of the sexes," L'Heureux-Dube said Thursday at a breakfast conference organized by Fatima Houda-Pepin, deputy Speaker of the Quebec national assembly.

L'Heureux-Dube, who has no problem with same-sex marriage, said the law is already clear in Canada and polygamy does not have the same acceptance as same-sex marriage.

...

"Marriage is a union of two people, period," she said, adding that Canada's Criminal Code clearly states that polygamy is illegal.

She makes one other very interesting comment, and it is one we should bear in mind when considering related subjects coming out of the United States, as well as some of the goofier things we've seen in Canada:

L'Heureux-Dube noted that in the United States authorities lay charges of sexual exploitation, rather than polygamy, because in the U.S. "freedom of religion has become a religion."

The retired high-court judge, who is still active at 81, said "reasonable accommodation" of religious differences is important, but it must be reasonable.

Revisiting the case of a Montreal YMCA that frosted its windows at the request of its Hassidic Jewish neighbours, she suggested a reasonable course for people who do not want to see women exercising in spandex.

"They should close their eyes," she said.

The simple fact is that the only people who claim any kind of relationship between SGM and Polygamy are the shrieking loons of the religious right. Nobody has ever put forth a single shred of coherent evidence that demonstrates even the slightest equivalency.

The coming trial will be very interesting indeed.

That Was Predictable

Sure enough, Winston Blackmore opened his mouth and the first thing he claims is that the charges against him are religious persecution:

“Tens of thousands of polygamists, among many different cultures, are hiding in plain sight all across Canada. They are known by their neighbours, police, legislators and the media just as we are,” he said. However those polygamists are accepted as active, valued members of the communities in which they live, he said.

“But they are not fundamentalist Mormons,” Mr. Blackmore added. “To us, this is about religious persecution. And persecution has always been about politics. Whatever else is involved in this, it is still all about politics.”

The argument that freedom of religion trumps the criminal code in this situation is intriguing. I think that the question that this raises is whether a specific religious practice is 'protected', regardless of whether it exploits people, or arbitrarily denies them other rights.

In the situation in Bountiful, there is the appearance of enough evidence to suggest that polygamy is in fact practiced by coercion. In which case, the situation falls well within the original intent of the polygamy laws - namely to protect people (in particular women) from exploitation.

What little I know of polyamorous relationships, they are seemingly more balanced than the situation in Bountiful - a relationship between peers, rather than what appears to be a basically subservient role for one or more members of the relationship.

The Bountiful situation is a much more rigid, inflexible model which places women in a position that inhibits their ability to exercise their individual rights under the Constitution.

So the question before the courts will in fact be whether or not the polygamous relationship that Mr. Blackmore is engaged in unreasonably restricts the rights of Mr. Blackmore's spouses to exercise their rights adequately.

I would argue that, for example, a religious believe that young males should be lashed to a stone and starved for six months would unreasonably restrict the rights of those lashed to the stone to exercise their rights. It would not be an unreasonable limitation on freedom of religion to consider that treatment criminal - likely along the lines of kidnapping, assault and unlawful confinement.

This is really the question which will ultimately end up before the courts in Canada.