Religion and criminal law

I thought this was an interesting article about a religious group that still practices polygamy in Canada. What interests me about this is that the government has investigated the group previously in 1991 but did not pursue a case. Religious beliefs can be pervasive in all aspects of life and conflict with secular laws can create quite a dilemma.

[/XX Comment] So from a privacy standpoint, or from an equal protection standpoint, I don't really see a conflict between anti-polygamy laws and the Constitution. In other words, it's not an undue burden on people's privacy (like certain anti-abortion laws, or laws restricting hte use of contraception, or homosexual sodomy), and it's not an equal protection problem either from a doctrinal standpoint.

We didn't study freedom of religion at all in my conlaw class, but here's my feeling about it...

Freedom of speech is not an unlimited right. Depending on what kind of speech you are making and where you are making it, government can limit your right to free speech, so long the regulation is viewpoint neutral.

Doctrinally, I don't know anything about freedom of religion, but I'm going to venture forth a guess that freedom of religion is not an unlimited right either, since it's covered under the same amendment. For instance, I doubt I could start a Religion Worshipping Gods Who Like Human Sacrifice, and then shield myself from prosecution for murder when I kill people on a purely religious basis.

So long as the secular law is constitutional, I don't see a problem with the enforcement of secular law infringing on freedom of religion. I don't see why your practising your religion should entitle you to violating secular laws. (Of course, I don't know how Canadian constitutional law looks at anti-polygamy laws.)

This mindset of mine is why I also had trouble with the torts cases I'd blogged about some time ago, where the religious person had a 'reasonable religious person' standard rather than a 'reasonable person' standard for liability. I just don't get it.

[/XY Comment] Well it seems to me that outlawing polygamy doesn't really make too much sense to me. Is a person allowed to have sexual relations with as many consenting people as they want? Yes. Could a man live with a dozen women and father children with all of them? Yes. Nothing there is illegal, and actually these actions are protected as regular freedoms.

It seems the only thing illegal is actually being `married' to multiple women, which is arbitrary and which most of society judges as morally questionable.

[/XX Comment] I think outlawing polygamy makes perfect sense, if you accept that the state should be in the business of regulating marriage in the first place (which I don't agree with). But if the state is in the business of regulating marriage, then it can regulate it however it wants.

The rationale for anti-polygamy laws is an anti-libertarian Protect The Woman rationale. It's thought that the state should protect women from themselves, from making decisions (i.e. marrying a polygamist) that are bad for themselves.

I think it's perfectly reasonable. But... the state should just get out of the the marriage regulating business all together.