Polygamists' constitutional claim must be challenged
 
By Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun
 
CRESTON - Before a crowd of about 350 people, Winston Blackmore admitted: "I have married several very young girls in my life."

But the former bishop of the fundamentalist Mormons from Bountiful, their community located a few kilometres from this East Kootenay town, said he had no choice.

The breakaway sect believes only men with three or more wives will be allowed to enter God's celestial kingdom.

The followers believe the church's prophet assigns plural wives based on a revelation from God. Followers believe that for a man to refuse a plural wife would be akin to saying no to God.

But Blackmore insisted that even very young girls can say no to the most powerful leaders in the community and refuse a directive to become a celestial wife to a particular man.

At a meeting held Tuesday night to dispel what he called the myths about polygamy, Blackmore also hinted he didn't immediately consummate the plural marriages to the young teens.

Just how young his wives were, Blackmore refused to say. He also refused to confirm that he has 26 wives and close to 100 children.

The youngest bride that anyone acknowledged Tuesday night was described as being one day shy of her 15th birthday. Midwife Christina Blackmore -- one of Winston Blackmore's wives -- said marriages at such a young age are unusual and she knows of only two girls who had babies before they were 16.

Winston Blackmore told reporters after the meeting that part of the reason that girls were marrying so young in the late 1990s was because of prophesies that the apocalypse would either coincide with the end of the millennium or when Salt Lake City hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics.

What went unmentioned by the defenders of polygamy is that it is illegal in Canada for anyone in a position of trust or authority to have sex with anyone 18 or younger. It's called sexual exploitation and carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

It didn't go unnoticed by a handful of protesters outside the Creston recreation centre, who carried signs that included one saying, "Sex with children is called pedophilia. Religion doesn't change this."

However, Leah Barlow, a midwife and another of Blackmore's wives, said the 600 or so people who belong to the Blackmore faction in Bountiful recently agreed there would be no more marriages, legal or otherwise, of girls younger than 18. (Eighteen is the legal age for marriage in British Columbia, although 16-year-olds may marry with parental consent and any children younger than that can be married only with the permission of a B.C. Supreme Court justice.)

It is not clear what is happening in the other half of the Bountiful community, which split from the Blackmore faction after Warren Jeffs became the prophet and president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints nearly three years ago.

What the Blackmore group concentrated on at Tuesday's meeting was making a case that they are a distinct society -- a unique culture in which polygamy is an inseparable part of the society's fabric.

Duane Palmer, superintendent of the B.C.-taxpayer-funded Mormon Hills School, said the people of Bountiful want to have polygamy decriminalized "where it is practised as a family".

"It [polygamy] is our culture as well as our heritage and we cannot change who we are," Palmer said. "How can we change who we are? We have been born into this culture and we expect the government to protect us against against discrimination. We are who we are and nothing will ever change that."

Another of Blackmore's wives, Ruth Lane, described her community as being a "cultural minority," adding that her six children have a constitutional right to be raised within their own culture.

The case that Winston Blackmore made for the free practice of polygamy is based on his interpretation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He says the Charter provides unlimited protection for any religious practice and that the guarantee of religious freedom overrides the Criminal Code prohibition on polygamy.

Blackmore argues that practising polygamy in the name of religion overrides the Criminal Code section on taking multiple spouses.

He may well be right. No one is really sure, because so far the B.C. attorney-general's office has repeatedly refused to test the law and lay charges against the polygamists. That said, the RCMP is investigating Bountiful and allegations of sexual exploitation, polygamy and trafficking of women across the Canada-U.S. border.

What struck a discordant note in Blackmore's argument was his contention that he didn't know until 1990 that polygamy was illegal.

Yet he and others talked about how they grown up in the secretive community, hiding the fact of polygamy from police and social workers.

But now that Blackmore and the others have broken their silence, not only on polygamy but on under-age marriages and pregnancies, they've laid down a challenge to the B.C. government.

Blackmore called Creston "the polygamy capital of Canada" when he invited people to the summit. It's now up to the public, police, politicians and possibly the courts to decide whether practising polygamy is a constitutional right and whether a polygamist society is a unique culture.

It's also now up to the police, politicians and perhaps the courts to determine whether to allow the sexual exploitation of girls to go unpunished -- even if it did happen when the end of the world was (apparently) nigh.

dbramham@png.canwest.com
 
Vancouver Sun
Originally published Thursday, April 21, 2005
 
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