Mouth Opened, Foot Inserted

Today in the Canadian Reference case, evolutionary psychologist, Todd Shackelford, disputed the earlier testimony of Joseph Henrich (see this article).

Shackelford reminded the court that, if abuse allegedly occurs in some polygamous households, it certainly occurs in every other mating relationship also - polygamy absolutely does not have the "corner" on the abuse "market".

Idiot B.C. Attorney General, Craig Jones, tried to argue that, just because it can clearly be shown that monogamists have also been shown to perpetrate abuse, it remains to be demonstrated whether the abuses occurring in polygamous households occur to a greater extent.

NO DUHH !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I bet you wish you could take that statement back !!!

Anyway, Jonesy-Boy, if you are so confident that a thorough scientific study would prove that the abuse statistics in polygamous families will surely be proportionally higher than those in monogamous homes, then have at it! Commission the study; ignore the work of Janet Bennion; ignore the work of Altman and Ginat, and start afresh. Take about five years, and then let's resume this circus of a trial in 2015. Plus, while you're at it, do me a big favor, and name three women from polygamous households in Canada who have filed criminal abuse charges in the last ten years.

Jones, I think you are like the witnesses you have called. You have a final, scripted objective - namely to convince a court that the concept of polygamy is evil and that its practitioners must be criminalized, so you scrounge around for anecdotes, and twist academic thinking to bolster your objective at any cost. That is both silly and dishonest. It has no relationship to logic and the truth. You could better argue that the higher the mountain, the greater the likelihood that the mountain-climber will fall and die when climbing it - justifying a criminal prohibition against mountain-climbing above 10,000 feet. If you want to protect Canadians from themselves, start with yourself.

Here's what I see:- the "anti" crowd is churning out an incessant, repetitive, tiresome drumbeat of - "Polygamy is dreadful because we heard that some people were upset with their experiences in a plural family." That is about as absurd as saying, "All Indians walk in single file - and I know this for sure, because the last Indian I saw was walking in single file." Meanwhile the "pro" crowd is offering a cumulative crescendo of voices saying, "Yeah, we're not perfect - we're human, but we are no different from other humans in that we want happy families and we have deeply-held reasons for structuring our families a certain way, so the government should grant us freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association, and an inviolable right to privacy."

Haters - 0, Polygamists - 10