this case has been a disaster from the start, because the crown pursued the wrong set of charges.

i don't understand why the government would even want to pass laws against polygamy. in a free society, few women would choose polygamy, but the ones that do would be making an informed choice. i don't know how a government can stand there with a straight face and claim it's upholding female autonomy around abortion rights, then tell women they're not allowed to be in a legal, polyamourous relationship. there's a ridiculous contradiction underlying female autonomy, there. the only way this line of thinking makes any remote amount of sense at all is if you bring in this backwards burkean/foucouldian model of male dominance, and all this bullshit about men having some kind of "natural dominance" over women - then you ban polygamy to protect the weaker sex. but, why are we having this discussion in 2019?

and, i don't even want to have the debate about "religious freedom". i don't believe in "religious freedom"; there's a stronger argument for legal polygamy stemming from female bodily autonomy. any feminist able to think the issue through should see that, clearly.

but, what was/is happening in bountiful was/is not a consensual community of non-attached adults, but rather essentially a sex farm for girls. little girls. to conflate this with any meaningful concept of polygamy, or reduce the crime of having sex with little girls to be that you're having sex with more than one little girl at a time, is really kind of disgusting.

so, they should have been charged with an array of crimes that included things like pedophilia, statutory rape, sexual trafficking, etc.

instead, they got a toothless conviction on a law that shouldn't exist, which amounted to a slap on the wrist.

this is closer to what they should be doing. i hope they get a conviction, as insufficient as it is, in the grander scope of it.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/decision-expected-today-in-case-of-child-bride-from-bountiful-b-c-1.4426497