Canada Court: Polygamy Ban is Invalid
 
The Associated Press
 
CRESTON, British Columbia -- Canadian authorities have declined to charge two leaders of a polygamous commune, concluding that a law banning plural marriage unconstitutionally restricts religious freedom.

"Section 293 is invalid and will not be enforced in B.C.," crown counsel Herman Rohrmoser said last week in summing up nine months of research into possible charges against the leaders of a breakaway Mormon sect.

A woman who fled the commune near Creston, 75 miles north of Spokane, Wash., denounced the decision. Inaction by the B.C. Attorney General's Ministry legalizes the sexual, physical and emotional abuse women suffer in plural marriages, said Debbie Palmer, 36, a mother of seven who left the commune in 1988.

But an elder in the United Effort Order, a 10,000-member group based in Colorado City, Ariz., whose followers run the Canadian commune, applauded the decision. Dan Barlow, Colorado City, said the decision is another signpost along the road to legalization of polygamy in the United States.

The head of the order, which is known in Utah as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, called the decision historic. Church leader Rulon Jeffs said he didn't expect polygamists to flood into British Columbia.

Not all polygamists welcomed the decision, however. Rob Hender, Bluffdale, said he fears legalization of polygamy. If plural marriage is legal, the nonrighteous could take numerous wives without heeding God's laws.

"What would happen, we fear, is that all across the country, it no longer will be the religious practice that will bring us into the practice of God," Mr. Hender said. "But will bring us into the situation where men become whoredoms."

Mr. Hender believes in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which renounced polygamy 100 years ago, but has been excommunicated. He and other polygamists who consider themselves LDS do not recognize the United Effort Order.
 
The Associated Press
Originally published June 16, 1992
 
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