LAURA PAYTON, Parliamentary Bureau Toronto Sun:
OTTAWA – The Green Party voted down a motion to push to decriminalize polygamy Sunday morning. The vast majority of over 300 members voted against the motion, with 82% against and 18% in favour. The motion called for the party to push to decriminalize “polyamorous” relationships, where people are intimately involved and living with more than one partner.
Party leader Elizabeth May says she used to practice family law and isn't convinced the criminal code makes polyamorous relationships illegal. She urged the party to reject the motion. “I have huge issues with not knowing what this (motion) means,” she said. “I'm very unclear as to what kind of rights would ensue to a polyamorous unit as a family and what that means for the interests of a child and how that gets judged in terms of custody issues.” May said there's “a morass of questions” for which she's confident they don't have the answers.
Party members in a workshop session Saturday evening voted to send the motion to the full party plenary where they could debate and vote on it. Saturday's workshop vote was 14-8 to send the motion to plenary. Speakers in the workshop were careful to define polygamy as a marriage between multiple spouses. They made a clear distinction between polygamy between consenting adults and a polygamist sect in Bountiful, B.C., where domestic abuse has been alleged. A B.C. court threw out charges against two sect leaders from Bountiful in 2009.
Several Green members argued the policy is impossible to sell to voters and could mean losing support at a time when they hit record numbers in the last election. Those who spoke in favour said the party should treat it as a human rights issue, just as they did with same sex marriage rights. A group of 20 families in B.C. are challenging anti-polygamy laws at the province's supreme court. The maximum penalty for polygamy is five years in jail, but it hasn't been prosecuted in 60 years, according to media reports.
No comments:
Post a Comment