Canada is at it again !!!

If last month's shaming of British Columbia's former Attorney General, Wally Oppal, wasn't enough, his successor, Mike de Jong, wants to revisit the illegality of polygamy in Canada. I am confident that, over the decades since polygamists have occupied the Creston/Bountiful area of B.C., there have been several disaffected people who have left the communities and have something to complain about (my sister-wife spanked my kid; my husband didn't spend enough time with me; I had to eat oatmeal; I don't like long dresses; etc., etc. ad nauseam).

I think also that a lot of young women may have been married in their mid teens back in the day when marrying in the mid teens was fashionable and widely acceptable.

None of this has anything to do with the question of whether a man may marry a first wife legally and then add other women to his "family" through an informal religious ceremony and then proceed to conjugate with them.

Mike de Jong wants the Supreme Court to settle the confusion which has been created between Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms (which guarantees freedom of religious conduct) and Canada's century-old anti-polygamy law which reads -

Polygamy
293. (1) Every one who

(a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into

(i) any form of polygamy, or

(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time,

whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or

(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Evidence in case of polygamy
(2) Where an accused is charged with an offence under this section, no averment or proof of the method by which the alleged relationship was entered into, agreed to or consented to is necessary in the indictment or on the trial of the accused, nor is it necessary on the trial to prove that the persons who are alleged to have entered into the relationship had or intended to have sexual intercourse.

R.S., c. C-34, s. 257.
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I admit that I do not know Mike de Jong's motives, but it seems that any layperson can see that the language of the law is reprehensible, and the Court ought to strike it. Paragraph (2) basically says that no WITNESSES ("averment") or PROOF is needed of the commission of the alleged crime, AND it need also not be shown that the accused had or wanted to have sex. In other words - YOU ARE GUILTY BECAUSE I SAID SO !!!

I would rejoice that we do not have so dumb a law here in the U.S., but Utah's anti-bigamy statute runs a close second.

So, what will the Canadian Court do? Canada has tens of thousands of respectable Muslim polygamous families. If the B.C. fundamentalist Mormons are molesting teen girls, then charge them with the pertinent offences under existing rape/molestation/sex-with-a-minor laws. Methinks that B.C. would have done that long ago, had the RCMP found a shred of evidence during its multi-year inquisition.

Bottom line - YOU CANNOT write an anti-polygamy law without impermissibly targeting a specific religious minority. You also CANNOT write one without colliding with existing fornication and adultery statutes which no "right-thinking" western nation has enforced since Wilford Woodruff made his covenant with death and agreement with hell.

So have at it, Supreme Court, twist your brains, bend the phrasing, enlist the brightest legal minds north of Idaho and Montana, and show me how to prosecute a guy for having sex with two adult women (in the same month) to whom he is not legally married, and I will personally move to Canada and test the law.

I feel like these anti-polygamy activists and their suck-up politicians are unwittingly bringing about precisely the opposite outcome from what they really want. Before the U.S. Supreme Court declared homosexual sex a basic Constitutional liberty in 2003, gays in Oklahoma and Texas were legally required to go to the county courthouse and register themselves as SEX-OFFENDERS !!!!!!!!

Perhaps the world needs to come to an end before foolish people will realize their folly.

Today on Fox News I actually heard a financial correspondent say that the Federal Reserve is "an independent part of the U.S. government" !!!

Vote Bernanke !!!