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Winston Blackmore, a religious leader in the polygamous community of Bountiful near Creston, B.C., laughs with six of his daughters and some of his grandchildren in 2008. On Wednesday the B.C. Supreme Court upheld Canada's laws that make his polygamous relationships illegal.
I applaud the decision of the BC Supreme Court to uphold Canada’s polygamy laws. This long fight in the souther interior of BC, regardless of what Winston Blackmore would like you to think, is not about freedom; it’s about power. Here is the crux of the issue, the main point if you will, behind the judgement of Justice Robert Bauman’s 357 page ruling:
Women in polygamous relationships are at an elevated risk of pyhysical and psychological harm
Now as a Libertarian I do have an obvious ideological issue here. Consenting adults should have the right to marry more then one people if it makes them happy. The grey area is, obviously, when that relationships results in higher rates of domestic violence and abuse, including sexual abuse. How do we resolve the issue then? Well, t he supreme court, in my mind, has done an adequate job. In the ruling that upholds Canada’s polygamy laws those who are forced into marriage between the ages of 12 and 18 are to be exempt from criminal charges.
It would seem then that my Libertarian leanings are trumped by the facts of polygamy, namely that:
the practice puts women and children at risk, thereby justifying limiting religious freedom as well as freedoms of association and expression.
I do fundamentally believe that the state has the right to uphold and protect the rights of it’s citizens, including the rights of people to associate with whoever they want. However, once that association results in violence or heightened risk to women, or children then that freedom does need to be limited. A state has the responsibility to protect its people, especially from other people.
Cross Posted at The Ryan Painter Show
I am somewhat skeptical because I am not convinced one needs these laws above and beyond current ones. For instance, nobody thinks it is okay to have incestuous sex with preteens. However, we already have laws against that and police can step in whenever there is suspicion of such activities just as they would any other pedophile.
What really concerns me is if we go back a couple decades at the gay rights debate, the common argument from the one side was the homosexual parents were really bad parents, they just would have casual sex with anyone and get aids and whatever else. Now we know that these characterizations are false and the entire idea of saying “look some people cause harm, therefore let us ban the entire practice” is an incredibly dangerous road to go down and I am sure a libertarian would agree.
Now polygamy is fairly rare in Canada, but it is practiced extensively in Utah. And there we see that polygamy runs the entire gamut of possible expression. It is quite safe to say, I think, that there are polygamous families which live entirely acceptable – perhaps even normative – lives and it is morally wrong to oppose such free expression. Conversely, there is the Warren Jeff’s of the world which is very wrong but can dealt with not because of being polygamists but because of child abuse and the like.
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