Judgment delivered on polygamy hearing
VANCOUVER, BC—Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman upheld the law banning polygamy as constitutional in a November 23 ruling.
Dave Quist, executive director of the Ottawa-based Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, says the ruling sends Canadians a clear message that "we don't need to go down this road."
Quist continues, "This is the first court ruling that I've seen in many years that said there are benefits to the monogamous family formation that outweigh other formations.
"I would even go further and say heterosexual monogamous marriage is where the big benefits actually are. But that said, this judge has done something well and right."
"This is a very positive outcome," adds Christian Legal Fellowship (CLF) executive director and general legal counsel Ruth Ross. The CLF had intervened in support of the law.
The B.C. government had asked the court to render an opinion on the law's constitutionality after its attempt to prosecute two leaders of the fundamentalist Mormon polygamist sect in Bountiful, British Columbia collapsed due to concerns that it violated Charter guarantees of freedom of religion.
Bauman ruled that while the law does indeed infringe upon religious freedom, this was trumped by "concrete evidence" of the risk that plural-marriage relationships pose to women and to girls forced to marry much older men.
Bauman concluded that "the harms associated with the practice are endemic; they are inherent, [and] they arise inevitably out of the practice." In his opinion, "There is no such thing as 'good polygamy.'"
Civil libertarians and others who want the law struck down are expected to appeal the ruling to the B.C. Court of Appeal. Whatever the outcome there, the case will almost certainly end up before the Supreme Court of Canada.
But since these higher courts can only hear arguments based on the ruling itself—they cannot hear new evidence, for example—Quist is hopeful these appeals will fail.
"The judge," he says, "gave fair hearing to everything that could be considered in this case. He looked at all the issues involved. So that bodes well for us at this point."
Nor is Quist worried that the ruling sets a precedent for limiting freedom of religion.
"The test the court applied was very specific to polygamy," he says. "Polygamy is thought of in a positive way by so few people in this country that the same application could not be used against all religious freedoms."
But Paul Chamberlain, who teaches apologetics and philosophy at ACTS Seminaries in Langley, warns those who oppose polygamy not to be "lulled into thinking that this is a rather minor issue relating to one small, isolated community."
Noting that Bauman based his ruling mostly on polygamy's harmful outcomes, Chamberlain wonders how courts might rule if they are asked to define "marriage" as relationships where "no such harm had been demonstrated."
"The serious question is where it all goes from here," he says. "What will we say when two siblings come before the courts and ask to be married on the same basis? Or three, for that matter? Or people in different kinds of relationships altogether?"
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