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June 30, 2005

Pollyanna's revenge

This horrifying story should be required reading for the "what's so bad about polygamy anyway?" set. Reader's Digest version: unreformed Mormon elders are ditching their male children by the sides of roads, banishing them forever from their homes and families, ostensibly as excommunicative punishment for religious infractions. I think most could agree that sending a 13-year-old out to fend for himself is inherently immoral (many are apparently taken in by sane Mormon households), but it's all the more odious because of the real motive behind it: doubtless the more troublesome youngsters are the ones being singled out, but in reality this is just a twisted sort of cull. An abundance of young men is not something that polygamous communities can very well abide.

Perhaps as a result of these stories, and of a lawsuit launched by some of these so-called "Lost Boys," law enforcement appears to be cracking down on polygamous communities in Utah and Arizona. Warren Jeffs, head of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) — of which Winston Blackmore, Jim Oler and the residents of Bountiful, BC are adherents — has been indicted in Arizona, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports, on an intriguing charge: "conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor."

Consider: this is a man believed to have more than 55 children by 40 wives, some of whom were once his, uh, "mothers." Polygamy is just as illegal in Arizona (and Utah) as it is here, and yet authorities have declined to prosecute him on those grounds. Instead, they're going after him because he arranged a marriage between a 16-year-old and a 28-year-old. If this sticks, I think it's rather ingenious.

And I hope BC's Attorney General is watching, because Canada has its share of Lost Boys too. One-time Bountiful resident Jane Blackmore explained the phenomenon in a 2004 interview with The Tyee. Faced with a dwindling population of eligible females, she claims, Bountiful's young men "…get out on the streets, and do drugs and parties and find girls, and then, of course, once they start doing that they are considered the 'Lost Boys'… I know one woman in particular, and eight of [her 15] kids were boys, and she does not know where any of those boys are."

Canadians should find this outrageous. I think they would if they knew about it. So now, what's that you say, Mr Plant? The polygamy law is constitutionally fragile? Well then bollocks to the polygamy law: for each marriage over which Mr Blackmore or Mr Oler presides that involves a child under 18, simply charge him with conspiracy. (The "husbands" are no less culpable, of course, but it would be vastly preferable not to throw the entire adult population, Pictairn Island style, in jail.)

Demographics must be one of the strongest arguments against multiple-marriage. Even Islam, as I understand it (which is hardly at all), permits polygamy only in circumstances where necessity demands it — say, in a male-predominated post-war society in which women are completely dependent on men for survival. In addition to offending our moral sensitivities, be they religious and secular, polygamy is just bad science. And in the end, it has no real support, except from libertarian theorists who wonder why healthy and normal people shouldn't be allowed to enter into polygamous relationships (they ignore the fact that there are no healthy and normal people who wish to), and from anti-gay marriage activists who invoke the spectre of polygamy as a rhetorical device.

Both are artificial. The vast majority of Canadians find polygamy abhorrent — 96 percent, according to a recent Vanier Institute report — and besides, the children of Bountiful are not rhetorical devices. They are Canadians, and they deserve a damn sight better than they're getting in Bountiful. How wonderful it would be if even a portion of the Right's anti-SSM venom could now be redirected towards Bountiful's polygamists, whose actions actually do impact children's lives on a daily basis.

Posted by Chris Selley at June 30, 2005 12:23 AM