"Can anyone presume to tell where religious instruction ends and brainwashing begins?"

Hat tip to blogger "Sandy" at Introspection of a Plural Wife (at Heart). Iain Hunter writes the column that says it all

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The Victoria Times-Colonist - "I've seen high Anglicans genuflecting, Quakers quaking and holy rollers rolling in their places of worship, and it has occurred to me that something has happened to their brains. But when they emerge, shriven or whatever, they seem perfectly normal again.

It's the same with people of other faiths I've seen on TV, lacerating their bodies, beheading live chickens and crawling with their faces in the mud. I presume they have families to look after and jobs to go to.

What the Bountiful women have done, though, is more permanent. They've hitched themselves, like sled dogs, to one man so that he can 'raise up seed' and qualify to get to the celestial kingdom.

If they, and their man, really believe this is their religious duty, what right has any non-believer to stop them from performing it? And how can anyone presume to tell where religious instruction ends and brainwashing begins?"

Also he points out this circular logic, unseen by its users;

"A lot of people seem to assume that these young, healthy women in a polygamous relationship have been brainwashed by those with religious authority over them. They believe no self-respecting sister would subject herself to this kind of arrangement of her own free will. Ergo, this must be stopped."

All Polygamy is backward and abusive and it is self evidently so. Therefore, any woman in one, has to be brainwashed, and must be rescued and deprogrammed. But at Short Creek years ago, and in Texas today, there are no Patricia Hearsts, no victims of Stockholm syndrome that "snap out of it." The still believe, what they believed before when they were being abused at close quarters and being brainwashed after 9 months of "choice," or maybe they just believe it.

"Attorney General Wally Oppal's determination to lay criminal charges against Winston Blackmore, with 26 wives at last count, and James Oler, with two, is something that a lot of people would have applauded about 60 years ago when it was supposedly first considered by the government of the day.

The opinion of most legal experts seems to be, though, that it's too late. The Charter of Rights' guarantee of religious freedom, they say, overrides the Criminal Code's section outlawing polygamy, the section the Crown has chosen to use to prosecute the two men."

Read it all.

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