Slip Sliding Away

From the Globe

Defence to invoke gay marriage as polygamy trial begins in B.C.

Same-sex marriage, they said, would be the slippery slope to polygamy.

Just a few short years after Canadians engaged in a caustic debate over whether two men, or two women, should be allowed to marry, the prognosticators will find out if they are vindicated – however unhappily.

The lawyer for Winston Blackmore, the man with 19 wives in the B.C. religious community of Bountiful who is to appear in court today on polygamy charges, says he will cite Canada’s gay-marriage laws as part of his defence.

It’s an argument that people on both sides of the same-sex marriage fight were expecting: If same-sex marriage is justified under Charter rights to equality, then polygamy is justified under the Charter’s protection of religious freedom.

And why not? In fact why not homosexual polygamy? If we have redefined marriage to mean something other than what it has been for the last 2000 years, let’s just keep going.

And if you would like to marry 20 people in a church, come to the diocese of Niagara; by the time you get here pseudo-bishop Michael Bird will probably have discerned – with integrity – that polygamy is just fine.

2 thoughts on “Slip Sliding Away

  1. I sense a highly contingent opinion on the horizon! Oh yes, here it is:

    And why not? In fact why not homosexual polygamy? If we have redefined marriage to mean something other than what it has been for the last 2000 years, let’s just keep going.

    Since you’ve specifically invoked polygamy here, would you care to demonstrate that ‘marriage’ has been defined as being between one man and one woman for the last 2000 years? (Actually, which countries were you referring to? And why 2000 specifically? This all sounds highly suspect to me.)

  2. As you have no doubt surmised, the 2000 is a reference to Christendom.

    It was the polygamist invoking Canadian tolerance to same sex marriages rather than my invoking polygamy.

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