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The Biopolitics of Normative Monogamy: a Critical Discourse Analysis of the Polygamy Debate and Bountiful, British Columbia

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The Biopolitics of Normative Monogamy: a Critical Discourse Analysis of the Polygamy Debate and Bountiful, British Columbia THE BIOPOLITICS OF NORMATIVE MONOGAMY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF THE POLYGAMY DEBATE AND BOUNTIFUL, BRITISH COLUMBIA by ADAM BURKE CARMICHAEL A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Political Science) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) August 2010 © Adam Burke Carmichael, 2010 Abstract The issue of polygamy has become a political problem in the last twenty years in Canada, and in British Columbia specifically, because of legal ambiguity regarding the constitutionality of Canada's anti-polygamy law. This problem has been approached by academics primarily through a legal negotiation of women's rights versus religious minority rights. Popular polygamy discourse, however, is largely informed by a debate within the print media over core Canadian values regarding sexuality. This thesis examines the unequal power dynamics that serve as the preconditions for this debate and that are reinforced through the discourse. These dynamics form a complex web between various groups such as GLBTQ communities, social conservatives, secular feminists and those practising polygamy. I rely on a genealogical discourse analysis that traces the development of polygamy discourse in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, and the continuity of this discourse in the contemporary debate in Canada. Drawing on a critical analysis of Canadian print media, I argue that the contemporary polygamy debate reinforces a biopolitics of normalization in which a hetero-normative, monogamous and economically productive family unit is privileged at the expense of marginalized sexual-family structures that are characterized as a threat to the national population. I conclude that feminists concerned with equality within polygamous communities should take into account this exclusionary normalization while working against patriarchal forms of polygamy. ii Table of Contents Abstract..........................................................................................................................................ii Table of Contents..........................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................iv 1 Introduction.......................................................................................................................1 2 Method: Why Discourse Analysis?..................................................................................6 3 Context: FLDS Plural Marriage.....................................................................................11 4 Polygamy Discourse in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century...................................13 5 Contemporary Polygamy Discourse...............................................................................21 5.1 Anxiety Over Marital Legislation......................................................................................21 5.2 Canadian Values.................................................................................................................26 5.3 Neo-Orientalism, The War on Terror/The War on Polygamy............................................28 5.4 Brainwashed Brides...........................................................................................................31 6 Implications......................................................................................................................34 7 Conclusions.......................................................................................................................42 Works Cited..................................................................................................................................45 iii Acknowledgements This research was funded by SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarships Program: Master's Scholarships. I would like to thank Bruce Baum for his extensive comments and suggestions throughout the writing process; it has been a pleasure working with you. I would also like to thank Barbara Arneil for her guidance during my MA, and significant input into my funding proposal for this research. Most importantly, thanks to my partner Anne. You put up with a lot in the last year! I could not have written this thesis without your love and support. iv 1. Introduction The topic of polygamy has garnered substantial media coverage in the last several years in Canada. Though polygamy has been practised, and currently is practised, in many places around the world, and has been justified through various religious and non-religious belief systems,1 the debate in Canada has come to focus on the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) community of Bountiful, B.C., located near Creston in the Southeast of the province. As such, the controversy surrounding polygamy is generally concerned with a patriarchal form of Mormon polygyny (the family form of a patriarch with multiple wives) and the harms that this lifestyle inflicts on women and children in Bountiful. Particular focus has been on the leadership of James Oler and Winston Blackmore. The emphasis on Bountiful is the result of nearly two decades of RCMP investigations and failed attempts to lay charges against community members of Bountiful whose family structure contravenes Canada's anti-polygamy law, section 293 of the Criminal Code. The inability to prosecute anyone from Bountiful has largely been the result of a lack of witnesses, making a conviction on sexual abuse charges unlikely. In addition, the belief by many legal professionals, including some special prosecutors appointed by the Attorney General, that s. 293 may not withstand a challenge based on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which guarantees religious freedom, has contributed to this legal impasse.2 The debate around polygamy will surely become more pronounced and more public in the months to come as the issue of the constitutionality of s. 293 goes to the B.C. Supreme Court in a reference case later this year. It is perhaps somewhat of an understatement to say that the issue of polygamy in Canada is complex. On the one hand, polygamy gets at the core of conflicting Charter rights regarding 1 Nicholas Bala, Katherine Duvall-Antonacopoulos, Leslie MacRae, and Joanne J. Paetsch, "An International Review of Polygamy: Legal and Policy Implications for Canada," Status of Women Canada, 2005, p. 2. 2 Daphne Bramham, The Secret Lives of Saints: Child Brides and Lost Boys in Canada's Polygamous Mormon Sect (Random House Canada, 2008), p. 409-411. 1 religious freedom and gender equality. From a feminist perspective, the issue also gets at the heart of epistemological questions regarding voice and testimony; many feminists have privileged the notion that one's standpoint within power relations provides insight into the workings of oppression.3 Within the debate on polygamy, however, there are incommensurable women's narratives from within and outside closed polygamous communities. Some women who have left polygamous communities, such as Debbie Palmer and Jane Blackmore, have become vehement opponents and critics of the abuse of women and children that they have seen within Bountiful. Other women within these communities claim that they have freely chosen to live in polygamous relationships, seeing polygamy as an essential part of their religion and having benefits that do not exist in monogamous relationships. To deny agency to the women within polygamy risks infantilizing them; however, to take their stories at face value also risks marginalizing the voices of women who have left polygamy due to abuse. As far as being an issue of identity politics, polygamy has created a complex web of intersecting and opposing interests. On the one hand are the interests of closed religious communities such as Bountiful, who would like to secure protection from state intervention in their internal affairs. In contrast, the feminist legal organization, West Coast LEAF, which has intervener status in the upcoming Supreme Court case, argues that "[t]he practice of polygamy can limit women's choices and create serious vulnerability for young women and girls to sexual and other exploitation."4 West Coast LEAF has argued that s. 293 should be upheld as constitutional as it protects women's equality rights.5 But to suggest that there is a unified feminist voice on the issue is to over-simplify. In a report commissioned by Status of Women 3 See for example D. Lynn Hallstein, “Where standpoint stands now: an introduction and commentary,” Women's Studies in Communication, vol. 23, no. 1, 2000, for a survey of the various theoretical articulations of this position. 4 West Coast LEAF, "Current and Recent Cases," http://www.westcoastleaf.org/index.php? pageID=58&parentid=20. 5 Ibid. 2 Canada, a group of legal scholars from Queen's University agree with the B.C. Civil Liberties Association that s. 293 should be repealed as it unnecessarily criminalizes polygamy instead of focussing on spousal and child abuse which can be addressed with other provisions of the Criminal Code.6 Furthermore, Angela Campbell, through first hand interviews with women in Bountiful, has found evidence that while these women are aware of some of the abuses within Bountiful, they generally see polygamy as beneficial and display informed agency in choosing to remain part of the community.7 Beyond conflicting
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