The Toronto Star - Canada December 16, 2010
B.C. polygamy hearings break for holidays
by James Keller
VANCOUVER—The British Columbia judge who will pass judgment on Canada’s law against multiple marriage will take a break over Christmas from the battle of experts that has comprised the case so far, after hearing Thursday from a political scientist whose statistical analysis links polygamy with a long list of abuses.
B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman has heard weeks of contradictory expert testimony about how polygamy affects women, children and society.
Polygamy inevitably creates teenage brides, causes physical and sexual abuse, discriminates against women and forces young men with no one left to marry into lives of drugs and crime. Or it doesn’t.
Allowing men to marry several women leads to conflict among wives and children, and takes away their freedom to make their own decisions. Or, perhaps, it does the opposite.
And abandoning polygamy fosters democracy, economic prosperity and equality for women. Then again, maybe not.
These are the competing opinions that have emerged so far in the Vancouver courtroom, where about a half dozen experts have yet to appear in the new year, as well as a current and former residents of polygamous communities. Among those witnesses will be residents from the small polygamous commune of Bountiful, B.C., which prompted the case in the first place.
“We’ve made tremendous progress in developing an unparalleled evidentiary record on the issues that we’re struggling with, and we’re all engaged in an extraordinary exercise,” Bauman told a courtroom full of lawyers Thursday.
“I won’t comment on the excellent evidence we’ve received.”
The judge heard from Rose McDermott, a political scientist from Rhode Island, who presented a series of statistics linking polygamy with a long list of harms to women and children.
McDermott, who teaches political psychology at Brown University, conducted a statistical analysis focusing exclusively on polygyny — the most common form of polygamy in which a man has multiple wives.
She rated the level of polygamy in 172 countries, and then compared those ratings with data about social trends in those countries.
McDermott said as polygamy increases, so do the rates of maternal mortality, teenage marriages and births, sex trafficking and domestic violence. A rise in polygamy is also associated with lower education opportunities for boys and girls, and greater inequity between men and women, she said.
It’s impossible to say for certain that polygamy is the root cause of those problems, she said.
But “the likelihood that the relationship between polygyny and these variables emerges by chance is extremely unlikely,” she said.
McDermott’s testimony was challenged by George Macintosh, a lawyer appointed by the court to argue against the current law.
Macintosh noted McDermott didn’t adjust her data to compensate for other factors such as war, famine and HIV-AIDS outbreaks, which he suggested could also cause some of the phenomenon described.
He also noted McDermott didn’t conduct any research specifically about polygamy in Canada.
The case has its roots in last year’s failed prosecution of the two leaders in Bountiful. The community’s residents are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church. The mainstream church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
Winston Blackmore and James Oler were each charged with one count of practising polygamy, but those charges were later thrown out for technical legal reasons.
Rather than appeal, the B.C. government asked the court to examine whether the law against polygamy is constitutional.
The case, which started last month, is set to resume Jan. 5.
This article was found at:
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/908243--b-c-polygamy-hearings-break-for-holidays
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CBC News - Canada December 16, 2010
Polygamy linked to abuse, professor says
The Canadian Press
Polygamy is statistically linked to a long list of harms to women and children, a U.S. political scientist has told a B.C. Supreme Court hearing on Canada's polygamy laws.
Rose McDermott, who teaches political psychology at Brown University in Rhode Island, said Thursday that she conducted a statistical analysis focusing exclusively on polygyny — the most common form of polygamy in which a man has multiple wives.
McDermott rated the level of polygamy in 172 countries and then compared those ratings with data about social trends in those countries.
As polygamy increases, so do the rates of maternal mortality, teenage marriages and births, sex trafficking and domestic violence, McDermott said.
A rise in polygamy is also associated with lower education opportunities for boys and girls and greater inequity between men and women, she said.
McDermott said it's impossible to say for certain that polygamy is the root cause of those problems.
But "the likelihood that the relationship between polygyny and these variables emerges by chance is extremely unlikely," she said.
Testimony challenged
McDermott's testimony at the Vancouver hearing was challenged by George Macintosh, a lawyer appointed by the court to argue against the current law.
Macintosh noted McDermott didn't adjust her data to compensate for other factors such as war, famine and HIV-AIDS outbreaks, which he suggested could also cause some of the problems described.
He also said McDermott didn't conduct any research specifically about polygamy in Canada.
The case has its roots in last year's failed prosecution of the two leaders in Bountiful. The community's residents are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church. The mainstream church renounced polygamy more than a century ago.
Winston Blackmore and James Oler were each charged with one count of practising polygamy, but the charges were later thrown out for technical legal reasons.
Rather than appeal, the B.C. government asked the court to examine whether the law against polygamy is constitutional.
The case, which started last month, is set to resume Jan. 5.
This article was found at:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/12/16/bc-polygamy-hearing.html
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CBC News - Canada December 15, 2010
Abuse not unique to polygamy, B.C. court told
The Canadian Press
The abuses so often cited by opponents of polygamy — sexual abuse, subjugation, conflict — are certainly not unique to multiple marriage, an expert testified Wednesday at a landmark B.C. court case examining Canada's ban on the practice.
Those abuses are found in all forms of marriage, not only those with multiple wives, said Todd Shackelford of Oakland University in southeastern Michigan, an evolutionary psychologist whose work focuses on male aggression within marriage.
Shackelford was called to refute testimony that polygamy inevitably leads to physical and sexual abuse, the subjugation of women and conflict within polygamous families.
"I have been focusing my research on some of these many negative consequences in monogamous relationships, including men's violence, psychological, physical and sexual aggression against their partners," said Shackelford.
"In every such mating relationship — indeed in any sort of relationship — you will find there is conflict.... Polygyny [polygamy in which a man has multiple wives] doesn't have the market cornered on some of these negative consequences."
Contradicts earlier testimony
Last week, another evolutionary psychologist, Joseph Henrich from the University of British Columbia, testified that polygamy lowers the age at which girls marry, increases the age gap between husbands and wives, and produces a pool of men who are unable to find women to marry. He said that, in turn, leads to higher rates of domestic violence, encourages men to exert control over women and increases crime.
But Shackelford said Henrich was simply using data from monogamous marriage — including from Shackelford's own research — and guessing those same problems would be amplified in polygamous societies.
"My overall comment is that Professor Henrich has not provided any direct evidence of statistic comparisons of the risks for these various negative outcomes in polygynous marriages, as compared to monogamous marriages," said Shackelford.
"And I do question whether it's a reasonable assumption that what you find in the context of monogamous relationships can be applied full force and without regard to any potential cultural differences in polygynous relationships."
For example, Henrich told the court, women in polygamous marriages might treat the children of their so-called sister wives poorly because they aren't biologically related to them.
Shackelford acknowledged there is research that shows stepmothers and stepfathers in monogamous marriages are more likely to neglect or even physically abuse their stepchildren, but he cautioned against applying that to polygamous societies.
"Given what we know, there may be some pressure on these co-wives in this cultural context to actually attempt to get along better, to treat one another's children in way that is in the best interest in the children," he said.
Crown challenges argument
B.C. government lawyer Craig Jones suggested it's irrelevant whether abuse also occurs in monogamous relationships. Rather, he said, the real issue is whether it occurs more in polygamy.
"We might say that drunk driving causes a certain set of harms — broken bones, deaths and so forth — and we might also say that sober driving causes those very same harms. The question, though, is: does drunk driving cause more of the harms?" said Jones.
"So it doesn't get us very far on the larger issue simply to say there are harms in monogamous relationships."
The case was prompted by the failed prosecutions for polygamy of two religious leaders of the southeast B.C. community of Bountiful.
The residents of Bountiful are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a breakaway sect of the mainstream Mormon church that continues to practise polygamy. The mainstream church renounced the practice more than a century ago.
Bountiful leaders Winston Blackmore and James Oler were charged last year with practising polygamy, but those charges were later thrown out on technical legal grounds.
The constitutional reference case is expected to hear evidence until the end of January. Legal experts have predicted the case is destined for appeal all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada.
This article was found at:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/12/15/bc-polygamy-hearing.html
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