A case for decriminalizing polygamy
The Conservative Party is renewing its promise, if re-elected, to keep people in polygamous marriages out of Canada through the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act.
But University of Victoria law professor Gillian Calder says treating polygamy as a crime is actually bad for women. Calder, who is the co-editor of Polygamy's Rights and Wrongs: Perspectives on Harm, Family, and Law, wants to see the practice decriminalized.
She says that would make it easier for women in polygamous relationships to seek help and support if they need it.
(The full interview is available in the audio player above. The following portions have been edited for clarity and length.)
Right now, polygamy is a crime in Canada. Why do you think that should change?
I guess I would start by encouraging people to ask themselves what's inherently wrong with polygamy. I think when people think about polygamy, the things they worry about are issues like lack of consent, harm to women and children, and what I would say is that those are things that we already have criminal laws in place to deal with.
If we decriminalized polygamy, how would that affect the women who are in polygamous relationships?
Decriminalizination would allow people to come forward, to report, to seek access to counselling or education or other services that they might feel that they can't access because of the force of the criminal law... When what you're participating in is deemed criminal by the state, it's very hard to seek access to resources, and if we're really worried about lack of consent or people being in a vulnerable situation, then I think we should be putting practices in place to support those people.
People in polygamous marriages are banned from immigrating to Canada under the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. Why is the inclusion of polygamy in that act so concerning to you?
It's racism. I mean, the language of the act is offensive. This notion that there's barbarism, that there's civilized and uncivilized practices. If we have people who are in a polygamous marriage and that was legal in the state in which they got married, and they're seeking to come to Canada for whatever reason, they're unable to practice polygamy in Canada because we criminalize it - but if they are seeking to leave their relationships or they're looking for other kinds of support, I don't think we should ban them at the door from coming into the country.
Could polygamy ever actually be decriminalized in Canada? Can you imagine that shift happening here?
It takes a bit of a culture shift to imagine laws being responsive to more than one spouse in a relationship, but those shifts have happened already in Canadian law. The new family law in British Columbia for the first time, due to new reproductive technologies, recognizes that a child can have more than two parents. That was unimaginable, now it's in place... The idea of same sex marriage was unfathomable for many. It's been in place for ten years. These kinds of shifts are possible... The only remaining thing is that we say that a marriage has to be to the exclusion of all others. I think it's something that is fathomable as a change. I just really think we don't need the criminal law to continue to say, this form of family is unacceptable.
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