Put polygamy to constitutional test
 
By Mindelle Jacobs
Edmonton Sun
 
For years, Winston Blackmore has been portraying himself as an unassuming family man - albeit with 20-odd wives - and the government has been content to leave him alone.

Lately, the Bountiful, B.C., polygamist leader has become a media hound, as evidenced last week when he held a news conference to complain that three of his wives face deportation back to the U.S. because their visitors' visas have expired.

Blackmore suspects immigration authorities rejected his wives' appeals to stay in Canada on humanitarian and compassionate grounds just because they're polygamists.

Well, I would hope so. Now, will officials please hurry up and turf these women out of the country? As for the 16 Canadian children they've reportedly had, there's no perfect solution, but I'd place them in foster homes.

Leaving them in Bountiful means sentencing them to bleak and twisted lives.

The girls would be brainwashed to believe they are incapable of being autonomous and the boys would be indoctrinated to wield women like puppets.

As for Blackmore, let's stop pussy-footing around and charge him with polygamy. He's certainly not hiding his activities, and he's making an ass out of the law.

The big question is whether our law banning polygamy will be deemed unconstitutional because it violates freedom of religion under the charter of rights.

We've been dancing around the issue like cowards for too long. Let's take it to court and see what happens. "At least we'll get clarification," says Calgary social justice lawyer Vaughn Marshall. "I think the clarification's needed one way or the other."

Anti-polygamy activist Nancy Mereska agrees. "Definitely, it's time Winston Blackmore was charged," she says. "(He) is a polygamist. He's very open about it. His ego just shines all the time and it's time that we took some of the shine off, because he's tarnished too many lives."

Mereska, a former mainstream Mormon and the co-ordinator of the e-mail network Stop Polygamy in Canada, points out that the Utah Supreme Court just ruled that the state's ban on polygamy is constitutional.

Marshall adds that the Utah Supreme Court ruling would be good ammunition in a polygamy case against Blackmore.

"If I were a lawyer for the attorney general, I would use that as a persuasive precendent," he says.

While the decision isn't binding on Canada, it's from a court that knows more about polygamy than any other common-law court in the world, he says.

Nevertheless, Blackmore has a powerful weapon if he's ever charged with polygamy - a 2004 Supreme Court of Canada ruling. In that case, the court said that to be guaranteed freedom of religion, a person just has to show a sincere belief that his or her practices are an attempt to connect with God.

"The polygamists have one advantage in spades. There's no question that they're devout in their belief," says Marshall. "I think they're going to be able to at least make a strong showing that this is a practice that (springs) strictly of their belief and that if they don't do it, they will not get into heaven."

If the anti-polygamy law is found unconstitutional, the government will have to either use the notwithstanding clause to retain the law or argue that the violation of freedom of religion is justified, says Marshall.

Bring on the court challenge. I'm confident the courts will favour the human rights of women and children over the freedom of religion of a gaggle of oddball polygamists.

A report last year by the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre noted that in Bountiful, children in polygamous families "are raised in an environment where women are told what to believe and are controlled entirely by men."

Tacit tolerance of polygamy, it added, reinforces a patriarchal system that relegates women to second-class citizenship and the role of baby-producers.

And Canada has ignored it all. For shame.

- mjacobs@edmsun.com
 
EdmondtonSun.com
Originally published May 21, 2006
 
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