Canadian polygamists let off the hook — again
 Government says the polygamy law violates religious freedoms
 
By Frank Stirk
Christian Week Canada
 
VICTORIA, BC—The British Columbia government will continue a decade-old policy of not prosecuting polygamists, at least until the law forbidding multiple marriages has been reworded.

An internal review completed last month re-affirmed the stance taken by the previous NDP administration that the statute—Section 239 of the Criminal Code—violates Charter protections of freedom of religion.

"Faced with these legal opinions we will be seeking an amendment to the Criminal Code," Attorney-General Geoff Plant told Vancouver's The Province.

To Rowenna Erickson, however, this refusal to enforce the law is "very disappointing." A co-founder of the Utah-based group Tapestry Against Polygamy (TAP), she says the province is ignoring the reality that women trapped in a polygamous "marriage" suffer appalling abuse.

"Polygamists are every bit as bad as the Taliban in the way that they treat women," said Erickson in an interview from Salt Lake City. "They use them as property, they barter and trade them and they force them into marriages at very young ages."

"Some polygamists demand that the women have a child per year," TAP executive director Vicky Prunty added. "They're breeding like little rabbits. It's just unreal how fast this type of population is growing."

Other problems associated with polygamous communities are said to include child sexual abuse, incest, high levels of poverty and tax fraud.

The number of polygamists in the western U.S. is estimated at 30,000, according to the Los Angeles Times. But some have also moved to Canada.

In the rural area near Creston, B.C. is the 1,000-member Bountiful commune, an affiliate of a fundamentalist Mormon sect which split from the LDS church after it renounced polygamy in 1890.

Bountiful's leader is Winston Blackmore, reputed to have 30 wives and 80 children.

In 1992, the RCMP recommended charges under Section 239 be laid against Blackmore and elder Dalmin Oler. But Attorney-General Colin Gabelmann decided not to prosecute, after being advised the law banning polygamy is "invalid."

Gabelmann also said polygamy is "a social problem" which needed to be attacked on many fronts, not just through the courts.

"Actually, governments don't know what to do," says Erickson, "so they refuse to do anything. They claim that (polygamy) is against the law, and that's about it."

But Province columnist Susan Martinuk says this failure to act is symptomatic of a deeper moral malaise. "After all," she writes, "our society has worked hard to overcome the social stigmas associated with almost any family situation that departs from the traditional, heterosexual family."

Martinuk predicts "if we won't take a stand against divorcing spouses for no particular reason or marrying same-sex couples, it's too late to cry out for judgment against marriage in multiple numbers. It won't be long before polygamy is viewed as a legitimate marital state in our tolerant nation."

But TAP—which tried to use the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City to draw media attention to what it calls "B.C.'s and Utah's dirty little secrets" — hopes to prevent that.

"We're going to do something, but it's not all finalized," says Prunty. "Basically, we're going to do more to educate and warn the Canadian government, because we would hate to see this problem go from here (in Utah) to Canada."

So far, she said, all that TAP has done is to document the "trafficking" in young women and girls that it alleges has gone on between the U.S. and Canada.

Prunty warns that if nothing is undertaken to confront polygamy, the problem is only going to get worse and become harder to solve. "As soon as our state puts pressure on the polygamists and starts prosecuting them, they're going to go right to Canada.

"Hopefully we can do some prevention before they get there."
 
christianweek.org
Originally published March 5, 2002
 
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