By Chris Bonshor (Copy Editor) – Email
Polygamy once served a purpose. In places and times where there were far fewer men than women because of war or population crises, polygamy was necessary in order to preserve societies. Now it is not as there is about an equal number of men and women in our society today.
We cannot argue for or against polygamy simply based on problems of population because, in the case of Bountiful, B.C., it is practiced by only about 1000 people. That does not mean that it is not important to consider whether it is a practice that should or should not be enforced as illegal in B.C., where it is still currently illegal.
There is also no reason based on one way of living being better than any other to dismiss polygamy as “old-fashioned” or worse than monogamy or polyamoury. Let us keep in mind that some things we now accept as legal and acceptable practices were illegal only a short time ago: for example, homosexual relationships were only decriminalized in 1968 in Canada – relationships, not even marriage.
Polygamy is not just a religious choice but also a way of living, fundamentally so. Like any choice that determines the way in which you live – as well as your offspring, as polygamy is primarily about bringing sexual partners together for the sake of creating children – polygamy cannot simply be a religious decision because it has important economic consequences. This is because it is very expensive to raise a child to adulthood in Canada. The Canadian Council for Social Development (CCSD) estimates that, in 2004 dollars, the average cost to raise a child to the age of 18 is about $166,750, just shy of $10,000 per year. How can one man afford multiple wives let alone their many, many children?
One of the most prominent alleged polygamists in B.C., Winston Blackmore, who, according to The Vancouver Sun, has been married 25 times and fathered at least one hundred children, used to be a successful business man and millionaire, as well as church father. I use the phrase ‘used to’ deliberately. According to an affidavit he recently filed with the B.C. Supreme Court, Blackmore is more than $5.68 million in debt and only has assets worth $867,000. This man, who has been fighting the courts for the past several years regarding polygamy in B.C., cannot pay his lawyers, and two of his businesses are in bankruptcy protection. How can he support all of his wives and children? I am unsure of whether his financial woes are the result of battling the courts for years, or simply the result of having to pay for more than one hundred kids, 25 of whom are still under the age of 18. It seems clear that polygamy should remain illegal in B.C. for the simple reason that it is economically untenable, even for millionaires.
Besides this, however, the idea of polygamy must also have psychological consequences for those who believe it, ones which are not consistent with parts of the constitution of Canada. All people in our society are supposed to be valued equally, and much of the work done over the past quarter century and more in Canada has been with the focus on making Canada a more equal society. However, the practice of polygamy has at its core the fundamental, unshakeable belief that one man is worth as many women as he can marry. In the case of Bountiful, we should really be talking about polygyny, one man with many wives, as the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints (FLDS) does not offer women the same options as men with regards to marriage.
I think it is clear that polygamy has little to recommend itself in the context of contemporary Canadian society. It is a system that does not work with the economic realities and ways of thinking about equality that are part of our society.
