Fear about law greatest harm of polygamy: advocate

VANCOUVER — A pro-polygamy advocate says the only harm she suffered as a plural wife was living in fear of the law.

Mary Batchelor of Salt Lake City describes herself as an "independent fundamentalist Mormon" who holds polygamy as a "vital and intricate" part of her belief system.

Batchelor has told a B.C. court case examining Canada's multiple marriage law that she was raised in a monogamous household and first entered into a plural marriage at the age of 20, becoming her husband's second wife.

Batchelor, who founded the polygamy advocacy group Principle Voices, says she was terrified of being prosecuted for violating Utah's law against multiple marriage, and she says that forced her family to live in secret.

Her husband and his first wife divorced in 1993, and while Batchelor has been in a legal monogamous marriage ever since, she says she and her husband still hope to practise plural marriage again.

Her husband's first wife subsequently entered another plural marriage, but eventually became a vocal critic of polygamy.

I've got no problem with polygamy, as long as it is pursued through free choice and not assigned wives and pedophilia like we have all heard about on some of the sketchier communes.

Meh. That seems to be the norm, really.

Well whenever the subject has come up in conversation down here people always seems to be unreasonably against it for some reason. I don't really see why it is there business. It's not for me, but it's not up to me to choose for them.

I suppose as long as they're not abusing women and children.

But meh. Those types of males are generally polarized by my own.