First They Came for the Polygamists…

By: Contributor · August 6, 2008 · Filed Under Civil Rights, Family Law, Politics · 4 Comments

Susan Drummond, professor of family law at Osgoode Hall, finally weighed in yesterday on the polygamy issue.

She claims that if fully prosecuted many individuals, including herself, would be guilty.

There is a general rumbling afoot in Canada about laying polygamy charges against individuals within certain religious communities across Canada. But there are some things Canadians need to know about our Criminal Code’s “Offences Against Conjugal Rights” before we can be sure we really want to open that particular Pandora’s box. One thing to ask may be whether you, or anyone you care about, has committed one of these indictable offences carrying liability of up to five years in prison. In the spirit of the poem “They came first for the communists…,” let me say that I have committed polygamy.

It’s the End of the World as We Know It

The rumblings have included other law faculty, and Prof. Tom Flanagan of the University of Calgary who said,

The small cult of fundamentalist Mormons will not bring down the social order by itself, but Canada is now accepting substantial immigration from Africa and the Middle East, where polygamy is widely practised.
If we don’t enforce our existing laws against polygamy, we will jeopardize the fundamental institution of our free society and constitutional government.

To the contrary, Drummond responds. She points out one of the many absurd consequences of doing so,

Catholics can never divorce religiously – and yet they can (and do) divorce and remarry civilly. Those who have done so (along with other Canadians who have not put an end to their religious marriage before remarrying civilly) are both in multiple conjugal unions and multiple forms of marriage. So, should the state decide to sweep up all those polygamists, many of us might be astonished at how many of our acquaintances and loved ones would be carted away.

You Heard of Bush’s Brain – Here is Harper’s

Just a reminder – Tom Flanagan is often called the man behind Stephen Harper. According to the Golden Lake Institute, the philosophy he ascribes to is based on the writings of Leo Strauss,

Strauss was very pre-occupied with secrecy because he was convinced that the truth is too harsh for any society to bear; and that the truth-bearers are likely to be persecuted by society — specially a liberal society — because liberal democracy is about as far as one can get from the truth as Strauss understood it.

They Even Came for Rita

And here’s some more truth – the RCMP spied on Rita MacNeil and other feminists during the ’70s.

It has long been known that the now-defunct Security Service spied on a vast array of groups — from trade unionists to student associations — during the Cold War with the aim of gauging the potential threat from left-wing subversives, possibly linked to hostile foreign powers.

As any student of COINTELPRO knows, Big Brother persecutes the Left, not the Right.

Laws Do Signal Values (aka Liberal Fascism)

Robert Janes, a litigation lawyer in B.C. (originally from Newfoundland) who writes on Thoughts from the Western Edge, said,

Professor Flanagan is right though that ultimately it is the role of our laws to signal our values and to reinforce the values we want to encourage. This means though that there is a role — contrary to what most of the right wing would argue –for the state to define preferred values and so to shape society. Professor Flanagan is also right in advocating move away from patriarchy — which marginalizes half of humanity — but this argument should be applied first and foremost to the laws which are having the greatest effect on our society. Professor Flanagan’s arguments are therefore to my mind arguments against all laws that reinforce inequality between men and women and entrench outdated religious notions of the proper ordering of society. The next time you hear a call from the right wingers for the imposition of abortion bans; support for publicly funded religious education; the repeal of laws designed to promote equality (ie the Human Rights Codes and associated tribunals)– just remember Professor Flanagan.

So first it’s the polygamists, then the gays, then immigrants from Africa and the Middle East, and then maybe people who refuse to procreate…