There is not (or ought not to be) any such thing in Canada as a religious tenet that abrogates human rights.
Some religions allow slavery, but not in Canada. Some religions allow the use of certain hypnotic drugs, but not in Canada. Some religions allow adherents to carry a long-bladed ceremonial weapon in public, and right now even that practice is being challenged under the law.
The religious freedoms we know in Canada do not include marriage without free consent, marriage to multiple partners, human trafficking, sexual and physical abuse.
You might believe doing those things will get you to heaven but in Canada, that is forbidden. Period.
Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms trumps religious law and practice, and we should all thank God for that.
The Supreme Court of British Columbia is hearing closing arguments in a case questioning Section 293 of the Criminal Code, which bans polygamy.
One of the people who testified to the court was Carolyn Jessop, author of the book Escape and one of very few women to have gotten out of a religious-based polygamous marriage, with her children.
She was given away at age 18 to be the fourth wife of a leader of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the U.S. A branch of that church exists in Bountiful, B.C., but prosecutors have finally worked up the courage to see it end.
Jessop never heard the question: “Will you marry me?” She was told what to do — and that was to bear righteous children. She had eight, including one handicapped child who needed 24-hour care.
Living in that U.S. community of 80,000 souls, she said she never witnessed a polygamous marriage without abuse. (Aside from abuse within marriage, family practices included water torture of infants, to break their spirit.)
She hopes that polygamy will be outlawed in Canada and that this will provide pressure to have the practice ended in the United States.
There can be no allowing girls as young as 16 to be forced into marriage, or the marriage of any person who is not free and able to refuse her consent. Religious freedom has nothing to do with those human rights.
Canada has had a prime minister who was threatened with excommunication if he signed a law allowing the legal recognition of same-sex marriage. Thankfully, he did not buckle.
In fact, in Canada, no church has authority to define marriage. In Christian Canada, is a Hindu marriage legal? If atheists marry, is it legal? If two men or two women marry, will their marriage rights be preserved by Canadian law? Yes, in all cases, though there are many pulpits in Canada that might falsely seek to deny it.
If a man wishes to have multiple wives, can it be legal? That’s the question before the B.C. Supreme court right now.
Carolyn Jessop has seen a lot of multiple marriages, and she says she hasn’t seen any where women and children were not abused.
If a Christian husband takes a wife without her consent and abuses the children, the law can step in to protect the helpless, even though the children cry when their father is locked up.
That protection should apply no less to the people in Bountiful. Were all the wives free to decide whom they would marry? Are teenaged boys from Bountiful being taken to a big city and abandoned to Satan, in order that there will be enough girls to satisfy the desire of church leaders for paradise?
Even if someone’s religion allows this, the law does not. Not in Canada,
Look at Bountiful and see merely the latest example of why Canada should never allow organized religion to make our laws.
Greg Neiman is an Advocate editor.