None of us are even married under … the law'

ROBERT MATAS

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail

May 28, 2008 at 2:25 AM EDT

Winston Blackmore, a former leader of a B.C. polygamist sect, shares a laugh with six of his daughters and some of his grandchildren last month. (Jonathan Hayward/The Canadian Press)

Winston Blackmore, a former leader of a B.C. polygamist sect, says he is strongly opposed to new teachings in the religion that dictate how members dress and wear their hair, keep them away from computers and out of postsecondary schools, and isolate them from outsiders.

“It makes me sick,” he said, to think about the “new training” followed by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Canada and at a Texas compound recently raided by authorities.

Distancing himself from the FLDS and the teachings of its prophet Warren Jeffs, Mr. Blackmore said in an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail that the so-called revelations of Mr. Jeffs were inconsistent with the scriptures and “neither Christian, Mormon or decent.”

In a series of e-mail exchanges with The Globe and Mail over the past three weeks, Mr. Blackmore said he expects to be treated fairly by B.C. Attorney-General Wally Oppal, who is reviewing advice on legal action against the polygamist community of Bountiful in the southeast corner of the province. “I hear that [Mr. Oppal] was a fair judge. For the sake of his career, I hope that it can be said of him that he was a fair politician,” Mr. Blackmore said.

You (Ottawa Mens Centre.com, from Ottawa, Canada) wrote: President John Kennedy was well known for his many relationships, as have been many other very famous world leaders. Our family courts are full of women obtaining child support for series of children all with different fathers who are frequently excluded from parenting. Surely the denial of a child's right to a father is of more serious a concern than any "right" to have multiple partners in an established recognized relationship. If two men or two women can obtain a marriage certificate with a child or children deprived of a mother or a father, is that not more of a concern regarding the violation of a child's right to a mother and a father? The FLDS's obvious psychological harm to children is real but very different to those who simply chose to live with several spouses of the opposite gender.

Any legal inquiry into "polygamy" outside the normal child protection concerns is nothing less than a diversion from the very serious issue of Canada's failure to legislate a child's right to equal parenting after separation by both parents. Currently we have "Male gender apartheid" that systematically criminalizes men for simply being devoted fathers protecting their child's right to have a relationship with their father. Courts increasingly make orders for support on incomes that do not exist, not for any legal reasons but for reasons to economically destroy fathers and to prevent them from litigating the best interests of children.

Increasingly, family court judges engage in bizarre reasoning that is called "the process of justification", that is they take any bizarre far fetched allegation of a woman, and write a legal decision to sanitize the evidence and permanently deprive children of their right to have a relationship with their father and end up with a biological mother and another woman who dresses like a dad. Ottawa Men's Centre dot com

But Mr. Blackmore, a bishop in the religion from 1984 until he was shunned in 2002, is also counting on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms to protect him.

“I hope our government has enough respect for the freedoms of its citizens to not allow a Texas-style religious persecution to happen under the skinny pretext that some polygamy law meant anything to anyone. Hell, none of us are even married under definition of the law, and most don't fit the definition of a common-law relationship either,” he said.

“If there was not tens of thousands of people in B.C. that were involved in more than one ongoing relationship, then perhaps we wouldn't feel like we are being religiously persecuted and discriminated against.”

News media reports stating that he has 26 wives and 116 children are wrong, he added. “[The] fact is that I do not have 26 wives, never have had, never plan on it. And I do not have 116 kids,” he said.

Pressed to specify how many wives and children he does have, Mr. Blackmore said: “I have no legal wives and lots of family members.”

Last month, Texas child protection officials took into custody more than 450 children and youngsters under the age of 18, including at least one Canadian, after finding evidence of what they described as sexual abuse and a pervasive pattern of grooming children for underage sex.

Last week, a Texas court ruled that the evidence was not sufficient to justify the apprehension of all the children, and that the children should be returned to their families within 10 days.

Child-protection authorities, who are waiting for DNA results to confirm the identity of the mother and father of each child, appealed the court order. The Texas Child Protective Services told the court that child protection workers could not conclusively establish which children belonged to which parents. The court has not yet ruled on the appeal.

Mr. Jeffs, who has been the leader of the sect since his father, Rulon Jeffs, died in 2002, micromanaged the private lives of couples, breaking up hundreds of families for reasons that the prophet said were not yet revealed, according to Mr. Blackmore. Family units were “rearranged,” children renamed and identities changed, he said.

Mr. Jeffs required his followers to cut all ties with outsiders, including Mr. Blackmore. The new teachings split the religious community, the insular neighbourhoods, even families. Mr. Blackmore said his brother Brandon, who supports Mr. Jeffs, has not gone to see their mother in six years, although she lives five blocks from him.

Mr. Blackmore said he was neither a member of a FLDS congregation nor a leader of any other religious community. “I keep busy and basically mind my own business,” he said, adding that he acts in his capacity as a religious minister when called upon by others. Occasionally, he added, he meets with others who do not follow Mr. Jeffs.

Mr. Blackmore declined to give the name of his faith group. In 1990, he told a reporter that his sect, which he called the United Order Effort, was the true Mormon church.

Elder W. T. David Murray of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said a polygamist could not be a member of the Mormon church.

“[Polygamy] is not part of our belief. We do not have anything to do with it,” he said in a phone interview from Toronto. Although polygamy was part of a fundamental belief of the church in the 19th century, the religion renounced it in 1890. Those who practice polygamy automatically lose church membership.

The FLDS broke from the mainstream Mormon Church (or was excommunicated from it, depending on which account you read) in the 1930s over the issue of polygamy.

Mr. Murray said he views polygamy as illegal behaviour. “I don't agree with it. I don't think it is right. It is against the laws of the land, and I believe it should be stopped,” he said.

Mr. Blackmore said he has a book offer from a publisher, but he had not yet decided whether to publish his memoirs.

“It may be something that I write and then leave in my safe for a few years,” he said. “I already have more attention than anyone can stand and don't want any more.”

Wally Oppal sought and obtained expert advise that told him there is not enough evidence to charge "someone" with the offense of Plural marriage. The issue is not "adults", its children, not the children that the Winston Blackmore turns out in normal looking clothing in a spectacular exercise of publicity. Wally Oppal can't win that competition. The game Wally Oppal can win is by parading a very large number of former members, generally boys, who lived lifetimes of abuse, abuse that needs to end. These boys deserve a real father in their lives and Wally Oppal needs to ensure that these former members get the support they need.
That raises another question, who is going to pay for their educations that their cult so conveniently prevented from happening while using them as child labour.
The issue is child abuse. Ottawa Mens Centre dot com

Perhaps this is a "wakeup call" for BC A/G Wally Oppal. One of the biggest problems of those with absolute power is that they at extreme risk of making personal emotional decisions and disguising them as legal decisions. Our Canadian Family courts do the same every day. Men get the shaft, more akin to being burned at the stake in a Salem Court where an assumption is made that men are witches and like the Salem witches trials, men have an eternal reverse onus to prove they are not abusers or not such a risk to interfere with a mentally ill violent lesbian mother hell bent on making sure the kids never get to meet their father.

If Wally Oppal behaves like George Bush or any of our numerous insults to justice who comprise of the underbelly of the Canadian Judicary, he will place all the Bountiful children at risk just as the State of Texas has done.

What a tragedy, read the judgment, FLDS right say, "two rights do not make a right", The state of Texas says,
"Rather than meaningfully address the three statutory criteria, the Department (of Family and Protective Services) offers diversionary reasons as to why it would be impractical, or 'wrong,' to return the children to their parents"

In simple language it means, the Texas DFPS engaged in what Canadian Family Court judges do all the time, its called "THE PROCESS OF JUSTIFICATION", The people who do this are society's worst child abusers, not the plural marriage cult, but family court judges.
Not all judge and not all Child Protection Workers fall into that category, many are next to saints, probably most are, but the problem is that the bad eggs bring the Administration of Canadian Justice into ill repute.

The very worst abusers of society are not the judges who make the crazy "worst judge in town" decisions" but the judges who choose to blatantly ignore those decisions.

Frequently courageous judges make politically incorrect decisions that are legally correct. cont- see post 2 Ottawa Mens Centre dot com

2 - Cont - Wally Oppal needs to keep an open mind, and have a political blind focus on charging "someone with a plural marriage" simply to "win". Thats not his job. He is supposedly where the puck stops when it comes to the administration of justice and he has a role to demonstrate by example on how justice should be administered. He needs to seek out those objective legal minds and be mindful of his own bias which seems to have coloured his judgment.

So far. Wally Oppal has dropped the ball, and gone looking for a rock that will sink his credibility. High Court decision, that too focused on the deep south Baptist idea that plural marriage is a sin against god. That's a load of krapolla,

Wally Oppal should take note of the "outrage in Texas" and remember that his political future could suffer a setback if he does not start using legal reasoning instead of political reasoning to make a legal decision.

Its very obvious that Wally Oppal has had some excellent legal advice and has chosen to ignore it. Dam it, this is not about religious freedom or the right to practice a religion, its about protecting children from harm, specifically "emotional harm' and many of the FLDS don't seem to understand that have a culture of incredible "psychological child abuse".

Society is already outraged at the "ill advised' politically motivated raid on the FLDS compound aka concentration camp for the purpose of "psychologically damaging children".

Our society does not want to say there is abuse unless they see broken bones or blood. Emotional abuse, psychological abuse is placed in the "taboo" area, as is mental health and personality disorders.

Wally Oppal needs to take a close look at the definition of "psychological harm" and perhaps change his legislation so that it properly provides an appropriate legal remedy to the ongoing problem of the psychological abuse of children. Ottawa Mens Centre com

1- Perhaps this is a "wakeup call" for BC A/G Wally Oppal. One of the biggest problems of those with absolute power is that they at extreme risk of making personal emotional decisions and disguising them as legal decisions. Our Canadian Family courts do the same every day. Men get the shaft, more akin to being burned at the stake in a Salem Court where an assumption is made that men are witches and like the Salem witches trials, men have an eternal reverse onus to prove they are not abusers or not such a risk to interfere with a mentally ill violent lesbian mother hell bent on making sure the kids never get to meet their father.

If Wally Oppal behaves like George Bush or any of our numerous insults to justice who comprise of the underbelly of the Canadian Judicary, he will place all the Bountiful children at risk just as the State of Texas has done.

What a tragedy, read the judgment, FLDS right say, "two rights do not make a right", The state of Texas says,
"Rather than meaningfully address the three statutory criteria, the Department (of Family and Protective Services) offers diversionary reasons as to why it would be impractical, or 'wrong,' to return the children to their parents"

In simple language it means, the Texas DFPS engaged in what Canadian Family Court judges do all the time, its called "THE PROCESS OF JUSTIFICATION", The people who do this are society's worst child abusers, not the plural marriage cult, but family court judges.
Not all judge and not all Child Protection Workers fall into that category, many are next to saints, probably most are, but the problem is that the bad eggs bring the Administration of Canadian Justice into ill repute.

The very worst abusers of society are not the judges who make the crazy "worst judge in town" decisions" but the judges who choose to blatantly ignore those decisions.

Frequently courageous judges make politically incorrect decisions that are legally correct. cont- see post 2 Ottawa Mens Centre dot com

None of us are even married under … the law'

Facing possible legal action, B.C. polygamous sect's deposed bishop denies having 26 wives and says he hopes for judicial fairness