A Cruel Arithmetic: Inside the Case Against Polygamy is more than just an account of a court case. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the case known as Polygamy Reference that was debated in the BC Supreme Court. The author is Craig Jones, who acted as lead counsel for the Attorney General of British Columbia. Jones is also a Bowen Island resident and will launch his newly-released book at the Gallery at Artisan Square on Sunday, October 21, from 7 to 9 p.m.
Jones has included a wealth of information about the Polygamy Reference, a two-year-case that included 44 days of trial and more than 100 witnesses. The process, he says, also changed his personal views. "I very much moved from the civil libertarian position of Trudeau, 'the state has no place in the bedrooms of the nation', to wholehearted support of the ban on polygamy. All of the evidence we brought forward - and the Chief Justice said that the evidence was 'overwhelming' - showed that when polygamy was practiced, even consensually by responsible adults, harms began to spread through the community," Jones said. He believes thatBountiful was a perfect case study and explained, "It was started in 1947 as sort of a Mormon hippy commune.Within two generations, the mathematics of polygamy wrought havoc in the community, and led to an increasingly authoritarian and abusive community, child brides, lost boys, and eventually a kind of social implosion. We showed that wasn't just something that happened.Polygamy caused all those things to happen, it was absolutely predictable."
Jones' findings about polygamy are paired with insights about why laws exist and what they are meant to accomplish. He also explains why the Polygamy Reference looked much further than Bountiful. "We couldn't win the case - and we shouldn't have won it - if it was just about abuses at Bountiful.People said, 'If abuse is the problem, if marrying children is the problem, go after that, not after polygamy,'" Jones said. "So we took the broader view to show that the abuses at Bountiful weren't just coincident with polygamy, they were caused by it.We had to show that around the world, in every culture where polygamy is practiced, you had these harms.And we had to explain why."
Jones draws arguments from fields like anthropology, history, economics and evolutionary psychology that provide the backdrop for the change in his personal beliefs. During the trial, he realized that there was wide interest in the issue and set out to write a book not only for the legal community. "People you wouldn't think had much of an interest in law, let alone constitutional law, all seemed to have opinions, and most of them were pretty good," Jones said. "I came to understand that people are fascinated by human mating behaviour, and social norms, and questions about when it's right, if it ever is, to interfere in other people's personal lives in order to preserve greater social goods."
Jones now teaches at Thompson Rivers University and divides his time between Bowen Island and Kamloops. Please join him this Sunday at the Gallery at Artisan Square to hear about the Polygamy Reference. His book, published by Irwin Law this September, will be available for purchase.
