As expected, the federal government Tuesday joined the B.C. government in support of Canada’s controversial polygamy law.
[…]If Canada were to allow polygamy, it would be contrary to international obligations that recognize the harms of multiple marriages, said Strachan.
Several interest groups also told the judge that they support the polygamy law, which was enacted in 1890 but has seldom been prosecuted in Canada.
Jonathan Baker, a lawyer for Real Women of Canada, said that when freedom of religion is raised by fundamentalist Mormons as a rationale for polgyamy, the court should examine whether the practice being engaged is in fact based upon religious belief:
“Was the marriage entered into in the honest belief that it was required to achieve eternal celestial bliss, or was it simply a matter of social pressure from the narrow, isolated community?”
Baker added that it was “no exaggeration to say that polygamy is an anti-democratic abomination” and that a finding that the law is unconstitutional would be inconsistent with the values and opinions of most Canadians.
[…]The court is expected to hear more opening statements Wednesday, including statements from groups that oppose the law and would like it struck down.
The issue of whether the law is constitutional was referred to the Supreme Court after polygamy charges laid in 2009 against two members of the small Interior community of Bountiful were quashed by the court.
The trial is expected to run until the end of January.
Canada has one of the most liberal policies in the world on same-sex marriage, and they are also notorious for their no-fault divorce laws and punitive family courts.
Rates of public spending growth here in Canada, meanwhile, are only sustainable if we permit mass immigration, given that Canadian birthrate declines are more drastic than even America’s (where they hold, for now at least at roughly replacement levels). These days, that immigration comes from Muslim countries, something that has caused severe social unrest in European countries that have relied on a similar model.
“In the space of about 20 years, the Muslim community went from really nothing to overtake the well-established Jewish community in Toronto. And the idea that that’s simply just one more interesting exotic item in the Canadian salad bar—we would be extremely lucky if that were the case.”
Amsterdam, among the most liberal cities in the world, he points out, is suffering an epidemic of gay bashing from unassimilated Muslims. In Sweden, perhaps Europe’s most tolerant country, half the Jewish population of Malmo has fled after a sharp rise in Islamic anti-Semitic attacks.
“I was in Malmo a couple of weeks ago,” he says. “It’s future is as a Muslim city.”
That he considers Muslim fundamentalists an unwelcome element in liberal society is the kind of thing that gets Mr. Steyn so readily branded as a bigot, particularly in Canada where a worship of his most hated term “multiculturalism” has, he says, utterly shrivelled the limits on public discussion. That may, however, only prove his point.
“It’s a sick fetish,” he says. “The idea that multiculturalism simply on its own terms is a virtue in itself is completely preposterous.”
What the fact that 75% of Canada’s population growth relies on immigration says “in effect, is that tomorrow’s a crapshoot; tomorrow is whoever happens to turn up.”
When Immigration Minister Jason Kenney suggests, as he did this week that Canadians can choose between higher immigration levels, or having more children, he leaves out one option: for Canadians to stop spending at a rate that demands population growth. In any case, Mr. Steyn says, the fact that most immigrants bring behind them older or unproductive family members is just a way to “kick the can 10 years down the line and ensure there’s an even bigger population making demands upon the state for which you’ll have to bring in even more people.” Eventually, the pyramid scheme runs out. We are, he says, engaged in nothing less than “civilizational suicide.”
A policy of preferring skilled immigrants might help prevent the problem of radical immigrants, but that’s not the policy favored by the left – they want unskilled immigrants because unskilled immigrants tend to vote for bigger government, more wealth redistribution, higher taxes and more control of business. These policies are put in place by the left in order to buy votes from those who like to collect government handouts. In fact, the left opposes immigration of skilled workers, since they are more likely to vote for lower taxes and limited government. I think we could be very open about legal immigration – but then we have to make immigrants responsible for paying their own way and following the laws of the land.
While the United States is occupied with the federal challenge to California’s Proposition 8, Canada has its own pending marriage case, which is likely headed for the Canadian Supreme Court. Canada, which redefined marriage nationwide to include same-sex couples in 2005, against the backdrop of successful provincial lawsuits against the country’s marriage law, could be moving on to bigger things — literally. Specifically, polygamy and polyamory, as this case invokes the question of whether the government can continue to criminalize multiple-partner marriages. The case itself, initiated by the British Columbia Attorney General under a special provision of that Province’s law, arises in the wake of failed prosecutions of polygamous sect members in British Columbia.
Advocates of polygamy and polyamory seem to have an ally in the Law Commission of Canada, a statutory body of government appointees who propose changes to modernize Canadian law and report to the Justice Ministry. In 2001, the Commission issued a report, Beyond Conjugality: Recognizing and Supporting Close Personal Adult Relationships, that questioned the continuing illegality of consensual polygamy in Canada.
Polyamory is the end-game of proponents of same-sex marriage, but it poses even more problems for children:
If we take seriously the idea that marriage laws have an educative function, polyamory raises red flags. On each of the core functions of marriage — promoting fidelity, providing a tie between children and parents, securing permanence for spouses and their children — polyamory seems particularly harmful. Both traditional polygamy and polyamory promote types of infidelity (though the former is of a more orderly variety), of course, but the chaos of polyamory blurs distinctions of parenthood more significantly than does a setting where a child has an established set of parents and lots of half-siblings. The ethic of “choice” at the root of polyamory does not bode well for permanence either.
As complicated as the day to day existence must be for children in homes with multiple adults acting as “parents,” the breakup of polyamorous relationships would be dramatically more complicated for children. There would be an exponential increase in the possible divisions of a child’s time, of decision-making authority and demands for the child’s loyalty, when the dispute involves three or more people than when only two disputants are involved.
Clearly, when it comes to marriage, the adage “the more the merrier” does not apply.
I should note that research on legalizing polygamy is funded by the government in Canada. The 3 authors of that study are feminists, and like third-wave feminists, they oppose the unequal gender roles inherent in traditional marriage. Studies showing the harm caused by polygamy and polyamory presumably do not receive funding from the government, since those studies would not create domestic-dispute-resolution work for the government’s courts. Traditional marriage is bad for government, because it doesn’t require bigger government agencies, or more social programs. Traditional marriage has to go if government is to continue to expand its power.
At some point, I would expect the government to begin to regard traditional marriages and families with suspicion and distaste.
WINTERY KNIGHT 