We’ve all seen samples of those preposterous laws that still exist on the books in various jurisdictions throughout the world: Did you know that it is illegal to finger fuck a chicken before midday, in Wheel Lug, Montana?
Well did you know that a bisexual woman can move in with either a man or a woman, or both, and have sex with one or the other partner, but not both, anywhere in Canada?
The BC Human Rights Association has weighed in on the issue of polygamy, and Constitutional Rights in the community of Bountiful, BC. Here is a link to the news article, http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/2009/02/15/8404536.html
The text of the article will follow at the end of this post in case it disappears from the web.
The laws pertaining to polygamy in Canada were introduced in the late 1900’s, shortly after US lawmakers pressured the Mormon church to forbid the practice by its members. Anticipating a rush of Mormon recidivists fleeing to Canada to set up communities here, our forefathers cobbled together a quickie, anti-polygamy (Anti-Mormon actually) law to stem a potential tsunami of Mormon refugees.
The law is archaic and sketchy at best, and rarely, if ever enforced.
While the rights of bisexual women are not specifically mentioned, the BC Human Rights Association believes that it could be applied to many of us in this room: People committing adultery, for example, while themselves legally married. People who were once legally married, but now divorced, and living common law.
I have even heard it theorized that it could be manipulated to harass attached men employing SP’s.
Prosecution on these grounds, by this flawed and dusty law, are completely improbable, but how do we all feel knowing that we are technically breaking the law of the land and theoretically risking draconian penalties?
It is disingenuous to hope that because it is unlikely that cohabitating partners might ever be subject to sanction by Bad Law, that we should continue to accept that bad laws should continue to exist on the books.
Politicians and police like nothing better than to stretch the limits of bad laws to mess with peoples lives.
Prostitution is not illegal in Canada, yet Toronto Police ‘Vice Squad’ officers, (now rather disconcertingly ominously called Morality Squad officers) will happily bust any of us by the nose stretching expedient of applying the “Common Bawdy House” statutes.
Getting a massage with a manual release is not illegal in Canada, but don’t get caught in a parlor when they do a sweep of twenty or thirty agencies ostensibly looking for “exploited underage prostitutes.” They will happily arrest you, and toss you into the legal meat grinder, to fend for yourself, and don’t bother saying that their fruitless search for “underage exploited children” was mere specious rationalization, because no one wants to hear it.
And don’t be thinking about moving in with an SP any time soon, because even if your incomes are totally separate, if she ever gets busted down the road in the course of her profession, they WILL drag you into it under the “living off the avails” statute, just to teach you a lesson.
I met a Morality Squad guy at a party a while back, whose job it was to go into MPA’s and try to set up the girls for a bust. A smarmier, more self-righteous cocksucker, I’ve yet to meet; this guy, a born-again whack job, really believed that that he was fighting the good fight against Satan, and was doing his bit to enforce MORALITY, as he and his colleagues saw it.
This Bountiful crap came up a few years ago, and the Government commissioned a study of top legal scholars to examine the constitutional ramifications of enforcing the existing laws. The consensus was that the law would not survive a constitutional challenge, and there is no compelling reason to continue to have the laws on the books. This new BC prosecutor is a political grandstander, or worse, a fucked up moralist like my aforementioned LE acquaintance.
There are already plenty of existing laws to protect with exploited women and children. Every new invasion of our privacy, and each violation our constitutional rights, cumulatively erodes our freedoms and imperils our future.
Our constitutional rights must be rock solid, and not subject to the vagaries of voting demographics. Otherwise, one day, a Catholic voting bloc may eliminate abortion rights, or a Muslim voting majority will demand adoption of Sharia Law. The latter is already happening in parts of Europe.
It behooves us to take a minute and write our MPs (Member of Parliament, dammit) and voice disapproval. And forward another email or letter to the BC Human Rights Assocation.
---
DROP POLYGAMY CHARGES: LIBERTIES WATCHDOG
By SUNNY DHILLON, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Last Updated: 15th February 2009, 9:46pm
VANCOUVER — A civil liberties watchdog group is calling on the Crown to immediately drop polygamy charges against the leaders of a controversial B.C. religious sect.
Winston Blackmore and James Oler, leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Bountiful, B.C., were charged last month with practising polygamy.
Blackmore, 52, is accused of having 19 wives and 44-year-old Oler, three.
But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Monday that the 1892 law that the two men have been charged under violates religious freedom.
“The Criminal Code provides adequate provisions for protecting vulnerable women and children without invoking section 293,” the group said in a statement.
“We should not... stand by quietly while the anti-polygamy law is used in a selective fashion to intrude on religious freedom and/or on responsible adults who make relationship choices that alarm or puzzle other Canadians.”
The association called the law barring multiple marriages “archaic and over-vague,” and said the prosecutions were “ill-advised.”
“The provisions are drafted very broadly. Their original intent was to keep Mormons out of Canada,” association policy director Micheal Vonn said in an interview.
“They have the potential to be used again in a discriminatory fashion.”
The association said it has long been concerned about allegations of child abuse by the sect, a breakaway of the mainstream Mormon church which abandoned polygamy more than a century ago. The group urged police to lay appropriate charges if there is any evidence of abuse.
Special prosecutor Terry Robertson did not return a call seeking comment.
Shortly after his arrest, Blackmore said the decision to charge him was religious persecution.
Blackmore said there are tens of thousands of polygamists from many different cultures living across the country but his religious sect, which openly practices multiple marriage, is being targeted.
He suggested his arrest was political grandstanding ahead of a May 12 provincial election.
The province was under increasing pressure after Warren Jeffs, the U.S. spiritual leader of the sect, was jailed in Utah as an accomplice to rape for his role in marrying a teenaged girl, and after authorities in Texas raided a sister sect to Bountiful in that state last fall.
The civil liberties group believes the case against the two men will fail.
“We look to the lessons of history like the Doukhobors and various other places where we’ve gone in with a sledge hammer and had terrible results,” Vonn said.
“We have a way of going about this with relative precision and stability and we’ve chosen to go a different route.”
The association is urging that the constitutionality of the anti-polygamy law be tested by a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada —a recommendation made in earlier legal opinions prepared for the B.C. attorney general.
Vonn said the section being used to prosecute Blackmore and Oler could be used to prosecute many Canadians.
“Before your official divorce papers come through, you move in with somebody else,” she said.
“You are probably a polygamist according to how broadly drafted those provisions are in the Criminal Code.”
Vonn said his group is hopeful its advice will be heeded.
“We’re making a rational argument, we’re saying why it is that we’re making this call and yes, of course, we’re hoping that we’ll be listened to.”
Well did you know that a bisexual woman can move in with either a man or a woman, or both, and have sex with one or the other partner, but not both, anywhere in Canada?
The BC Human Rights Association has weighed in on the issue of polygamy, and Constitutional Rights in the community of Bountiful, BC. Here is a link to the news article, http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/canada/2009/02/15/8404536.html
The text of the article will follow at the end of this post in case it disappears from the web.
The laws pertaining to polygamy in Canada were introduced in the late 1900’s, shortly after US lawmakers pressured the Mormon church to forbid the practice by its members. Anticipating a rush of Mormon recidivists fleeing to Canada to set up communities here, our forefathers cobbled together a quickie, anti-polygamy (Anti-Mormon actually) law to stem a potential tsunami of Mormon refugees.
The law is archaic and sketchy at best, and rarely, if ever enforced.
While the rights of bisexual women are not specifically mentioned, the BC Human Rights Association believes that it could be applied to many of us in this room: People committing adultery, for example, while themselves legally married. People who were once legally married, but now divorced, and living common law.
I have even heard it theorized that it could be manipulated to harass attached men employing SP’s.
Prosecution on these grounds, by this flawed and dusty law, are completely improbable, but how do we all feel knowing that we are technically breaking the law of the land and theoretically risking draconian penalties?
It is disingenuous to hope that because it is unlikely that cohabitating partners might ever be subject to sanction by Bad Law, that we should continue to accept that bad laws should continue to exist on the books.
Politicians and police like nothing better than to stretch the limits of bad laws to mess with peoples lives.
Prostitution is not illegal in Canada, yet Toronto Police ‘Vice Squad’ officers, (now rather disconcertingly ominously called Morality Squad officers) will happily bust any of us by the nose stretching expedient of applying the “Common Bawdy House” statutes.
Getting a massage with a manual release is not illegal in Canada, but don’t get caught in a parlor when they do a sweep of twenty or thirty agencies ostensibly looking for “exploited underage prostitutes.” They will happily arrest you, and toss you into the legal meat grinder, to fend for yourself, and don’t bother saying that their fruitless search for “underage exploited children” was mere specious rationalization, because no one wants to hear it.
And don’t be thinking about moving in with an SP any time soon, because even if your incomes are totally separate, if she ever gets busted down the road in the course of her profession, they WILL drag you into it under the “living off the avails” statute, just to teach you a lesson.
I met a Morality Squad guy at a party a while back, whose job it was to go into MPA’s and try to set up the girls for a bust. A smarmier, more self-righteous cocksucker, I’ve yet to meet; this guy, a born-again whack job, really believed that that he was fighting the good fight against Satan, and was doing his bit to enforce MORALITY, as he and his colleagues saw it.
This Bountiful crap came up a few years ago, and the Government commissioned a study of top legal scholars to examine the constitutional ramifications of enforcing the existing laws. The consensus was that the law would not survive a constitutional challenge, and there is no compelling reason to continue to have the laws on the books. This new BC prosecutor is a political grandstander, or worse, a fucked up moralist like my aforementioned LE acquaintance.
There are already plenty of existing laws to protect with exploited women and children. Every new invasion of our privacy, and each violation our constitutional rights, cumulatively erodes our freedoms and imperils our future.
Our constitutional rights must be rock solid, and not subject to the vagaries of voting demographics. Otherwise, one day, a Catholic voting bloc may eliminate abortion rights, or a Muslim voting majority will demand adoption of Sharia Law. The latter is already happening in parts of Europe.
It behooves us to take a minute and write our MPs (Member of Parliament, dammit) and voice disapproval. And forward another email or letter to the BC Human Rights Assocation.
---
DROP POLYGAMY CHARGES: LIBERTIES WATCHDOG
By SUNNY DHILLON, THE CANADIAN PRESS
Last Updated: 15th February 2009, 9:46pm
VANCOUVER — A civil liberties watchdog group is calling on the Crown to immediately drop polygamy charges against the leaders of a controversial B.C. religious sect.
Winston Blackmore and James Oler, leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Bountiful, B.C., were charged last month with practising polygamy.
Blackmore, 52, is accused of having 19 wives and 44-year-old Oler, three.
But the B.C. Civil Liberties Association said Monday that the 1892 law that the two men have been charged under violates religious freedom.
“The Criminal Code provides adequate provisions for protecting vulnerable women and children without invoking section 293,” the group said in a statement.
“We should not... stand by quietly while the anti-polygamy law is used in a selective fashion to intrude on religious freedom and/or on responsible adults who make relationship choices that alarm or puzzle other Canadians.”
The association called the law barring multiple marriages “archaic and over-vague,” and said the prosecutions were “ill-advised.”
“The provisions are drafted very broadly. Their original intent was to keep Mormons out of Canada,” association policy director Micheal Vonn said in an interview.
“They have the potential to be used again in a discriminatory fashion.”
The association said it has long been concerned about allegations of child abuse by the sect, a breakaway of the mainstream Mormon church which abandoned polygamy more than a century ago. The group urged police to lay appropriate charges if there is any evidence of abuse.
Special prosecutor Terry Robertson did not return a call seeking comment.
Shortly after his arrest, Blackmore said the decision to charge him was religious persecution.
Blackmore said there are tens of thousands of polygamists from many different cultures living across the country but his religious sect, which openly practices multiple marriage, is being targeted.
He suggested his arrest was political grandstanding ahead of a May 12 provincial election.
The province was under increasing pressure after Warren Jeffs, the U.S. spiritual leader of the sect, was jailed in Utah as an accomplice to rape for his role in marrying a teenaged girl, and after authorities in Texas raided a sister sect to Bountiful in that state last fall.
The civil liberties group believes the case against the two men will fail.
“We look to the lessons of history like the Doukhobors and various other places where we’ve gone in with a sledge hammer and had terrible results,” Vonn said.
“We have a way of going about this with relative precision and stability and we’ve chosen to go a different route.”
The association is urging that the constitutionality of the anti-polygamy law be tested by a reference to the Supreme Court of Canada —a recommendation made in earlier legal opinions prepared for the B.C. attorney general.
Vonn said the section being used to prosecute Blackmore and Oler could be used to prosecute many Canadians.
“Before your official divorce papers come through, you move in with somebody else,” she said.
“You are probably a polygamist according to how broadly drafted those provisions are in the Criminal Code.”
Vonn said his group is hopeful its advice will be heeded.
“We’re making a rational argument, we’re saying why it is that we’re making this call and yes, of course, we’re hoping that we’ll be listened to.”
