Mormon Polygamy on Trial : Day 10 courtroom notes

Note: This is not an official transcript - and I am not a court stenographer. There are likely many errors in this report - but it is a reasonable account of the proceedings (especially when i could keep up)

Library is set-up outside - schedule for witnesses will be posted there.

Professor Joe Henrich Witness for AG BC

Dr. Henrich is the principle witness for the AG on the causes and effects of polygamy. Before his testimony, it is necessary for the AG (represented by Craig Jones) to spend more time than usual to establish the length and breadth of his expertise.

Canada Research chair in cognition and culture at UBC. From Government of Canada website, there are 2 tiers of research chairs. Tier 2 researchers are researchers who are recognized by their peers as world leaders in their field. Dr. H. has a PhD in anthropology but teaches in the department economics. Prior to UBC had been offered a tenured position at University of Michigan. During second year at U of M., was offered a visiting scholar position in Berlin. Received a Presidential award as an emerging scholar at the White House.

Bachelor degree in anthropology and aerospace engineering. PhD in Anthropology. $633 K grant for measuring cultural variation from institute of health. Grant from SSHRC on how groups affect thinking about individuals. Researches prejudice and stereotyping. Received grant at Emory in culture and cognition. Speaks to sociology and economics related to culture, cognition and evolution. His first undergrad degree was in satellite control.

Mr. Jones then introduces Mr. Henrich’s publications. One of his latest is in the New Scientist - called beyond WIERD - Western Industrialized Educated Rich and Democratic. He contends that the WIERD profile shows that Western Industrialized people are psychologically different from the rest of the species. He has defined universal and specialized areas of human behaviour - mating is on the universal end of the spectrum.

Recent article addresses costly aspects of religions - such as walking on coals, cutting of foreskin, dying for your beliefs, etc. These costly acts make it more likely to attract other people to your beliefs. Cultural evolution shapes genetic evolution over the long haul and over time, humans are becoming more cooperative and moral over time. Mr. Jones then asked Dr. H. what are the most prestigious journals in various fields - economics, nature, science, psychology, etc. He then confirmed that Dr. H. has published in many of these journals.

In a book called evolution, culture and the human mind, he has published a chapter about the types of Gods that are conceived in various societies. His research suggests that Gods become more moral, powerful, omniscient, etc as societies become more complex. Gods are conceived as being more interested in individual behaviour as societies become more complex. Certain societies are better at sharing information and interacting among individuals. These societies tend to evolve faster because good ideas are built from fragments of old ones.

From the Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology, wrote a chapter about how cultural and biological evolution affect each other. Is it safe to say that MIT and Oxford university presses are most prestigious - yes.

Dr. H. has been an invited lecturer in Canada, USA, London, Sweden, etc.

In terms of field work: Dr. H has made six visits to Fiji of between 1 and 6 months. He has studied cultural transmission, what children learn, who they learn from, how they capture information, etc. During this time, he lives in a house in the middle of the village. In Chile, he has lived among the largest indigenous group trying to answer the question of how people weigh cost and benefits between various decisions. He learned that people do not have all the necessary information they need to make these decisions so they rely on culturally transmitted information. In this case, he learned that they most often plant wheat over other crops because this is a more important in their culture. In Peruvian Amazon, he has studied the effects of distance from market in how villagers determine their economic decisions like what crops to plant, how much to plant, etc.

During these studies, he has determined that he must live in a community for several months before he is able to get beyond simply being an outsider in the community. People must relax around you before you can really learn how the community works and what people are thinking.

He is a reviewer for several journals including nature and science, and the proceedings for the natural academy of science, zoology, anthropology, etc. Reviewer for several economics journals and psychological journals. Also reviewer for philosophy journals.

Classes Dr. H has taught at Emory and UBC include undergrad courses in introduction to anthropology, etc. He has taught field and analytical methods for anthropology. At UBC he is teaching related to economic behaviour and morality. He believes it is important for economics and psychology grads to understand each other.

Mr. Jones asks that Dr. Henrich be qualified as an expert witness in psychology, evolutionary psychology, economics, anthropology, as well as interdisciplinary field of culture, cognition and co-evolution. Amicus accepts the witness (at 10:25).

Going back to Dr. H. affidavit - sets out his involvement in the polygamy reference that goes back to March 2010. He was asked by the AG not to advocate for any position but to follow the evidence where ever it leads and notes where the science diverges. His wife, Dr. Natalie Henrich, was his research assistance. Her resume was marked as exhibit 1. She has a PhD in anthropology and a masters in public health and teaches in public health at UBC. Their research on polygamy totals 144 hrs for Dr. H and 80.5 hrs for his wife. He has a sense that there are always more books to read but he feels confident that he has come to a good understanding. He has read the affidavits of Dr. Woo from Uvic, Dr. Shackeford, Dr. Campbell, Dr Scheidel, etc. He was here for the questioning of Dr. Campbell. Dr. H is solely responsible for the contents of the report and affidavit.

Dr. H presented a ppt which includes information from courses that he teaches at UBC. One of the courses is psych 358 and the other is economics 233. WRT to evidence as to the various harms of polygamy, please comment regarding the weight of the evidence on each point.

Dr. H. then proceeded to show his powerpoint .

Evolved mating psychology - female and male psychology differences tilt us toward polygynous mating systems.
The greater absolute wealth differences, the greater the polygyny.
Why is our society different - we have major differences in wealth but are monogamous?

Evolved mating pscych is different because of differences in reproductive psych. Women only produce 400 eggs, gestation, etc. Men have thousands of sperm and very little investment.

Female mating strategies
Women will have few offspring. Therefore they must have the highest possible quality partner. Women’s preference change over the course of ovulation.

Male mating - can have between 0 and thousands of offspring. the most successful strategy is to have many partners and not invest in offspring. Because this is not always possible, they like to form single pair bonds and invest a great deal in the offspring.

The resulting pattern is that males are inclined to make extra pair bonds and if they can seek extra pair copulations. Females only get pregnant sequentially - they want to maintain paternity certainty - so they do not want to have extra pair bond copulations.

As a cultural species, social norms occur - how do they behave, what is good behaviour, how to punish. This eventually becomes an internalized motivation and a stable social norm. Pair bonds come from evolutionary psych. Marriage is a pair bond regulated by what people believe about proper behaviour.

Marriage systems: Dowry, bride price, etc Rules about sex - 90% regulate female sex but only 28% regulate males.

Marriage systems are culturally evolved systems called institutions that regulate pair bonds. All marriage systems culturally reinforce pair bonding of human psych.

Not all human societies have marriage systems.

Anthropological terminology

Marriage is a long term bond between two peopel that is recognised and sacntioned by community.

Key summary:
Context of marriage systems, male mating pscych strongly favours long term pair bonds with multiple partners. Their ability to attract long term partners will depend on wealth and social status.

Male psych is highly adverse to uncertainty around offspring uncertainty.

From a statistical point of view the societies of the world are:
Polyandry 1%
Monogamy 15%
Monog 33%
occasional polygyny 37%
frequent polygyny 48%

Types of polygyny
General : wives are not sisters, there are separate households
Sororal polygyny
Wives should be sisters or closely related - tend to have one household.

Men in Polygynous families are always higher status than men in monogamous families.

History reveals that the larger the empire the larger men’s harems become unless they are regulated by laws or social norms.

Polyandry is quite rare. Usually fraternal. Typically intermixed with other marriage types. Tend to be unstable. Sometimes becomes a group marriage - when younger brother marries a second wife and become polygamous. Anthropologists argue this becomes common when men must travel - one stays around to deal with danger and the other travels.

Group marriage: scattered reports. In these societies, men choose to loan their wives services to other men, honored guests, etc. The other men might already be married so it may look like a complicated marital arrangement.

Fraternal polyandry is common because both men are related to offspring.

Theoretical interlude (and rest break)
Traces monogamy back to Rome and Greece. Spread with industrialization across the world. For example 1880 in Japan.

Greek states started monogamy in early sixth century as a way to increase solidarity between citizens. each greek citizen can have only one wife, but can have sex slaves. The wealthy and powerful make the rules and they benefit from imposed monogamy on all others.

Rome outlawed polygyny - Augustus sought to strengthen the empire and instituted reforms to encourage every man between 25 and 60 to get married.

Christianity gets its monogamy from Roman Empire. The Catholic church had a long history of battling with the nobles who tended to be polygynous. The church eventually got the europeans noble to embrace monogamy through controlling the definition of their heirs.

Once the nobles and kings are held to the same number of wives as the peasant farmers, this has been argued as a step towards democracy.

Theory as to polygynous marriage and monogamous marriage:
Polygyny _ expands pools of low status unmarried men. Facing genetic extinction, these men are motivated to engage in risky behaviours.
Increases rates of murder, rape, robbery and drug abuse
increased competition
drives down age of first marriage


Monogamous marriage:
Married low status males shift into long-term investment mode
married high status males impeded from investing in seeking additional long term mates
Both now motivated to invest in current wife and offspring

Maximizes genetic relatedness
increases paternity certainty, reducing domestic violence, etc

Polygynous
Married men reduce investment in current wife and offspring because they are always looking for additional mates.
etc.

Central piece of argument:
Always a pool of unmarried, low status men

If 33% of a society is polygynous, there will be 40% unmarried low status men. Dr. H has constructed the ratio the same as bountiful. If a man is on the bottom, he has to take big risks like crime, robbery, etc.

Evidence suggests that unmarried low status men engage in crime, social disruption, rape, substance abuse. etc.

Literature shows that married men were much lower risk of substance abuse and crime. Getting married changes men. Sampson et al 2006, showed that each man had a lower risk of committing crime during the time when they were married versus when they were single. Crime reduction of 35% when married. Even when a man is widowed, he is more likely to commit crime.

From a Nebraska study - the effect of crime reduction is about 50%, the same as going to post secondary school. Getting married has a bigger negative effect on crime than the positive crime correlation due to drinking. Drugs has the biggest positive correlation with crime.

Do individual statistics aggregate up to societal level? This is difficult because polygyny now co-occurs with low GDP, low female equality, little democracy, etc.

Ran regression analysis controlling for economic development, economic inequality, population density and democracy.

Replace polygyny % with number of unmarried men because number of unmarried men actually does the harm.

The regression analysis is noisy because of difficulties in getting accurate data. This was backed up by using a encyclopedia of world culture with a ranking term of 0 to 3. In terms of Bountiful, it is in the highest category of polygamy.

Sex ratio can also be a factor to determine the effect of polygamy. One child policy and preferences for sons cause a major effect sex imbalance in China. In India, there is a higher preferences for sons - and this leaves large numbers of low status males. There is a change in the psychology and this may be a factor in the larger murder rates that occur in India.

For China - adult sex ratios rose from 1.05 to almost 2 between 1988 and 2004 in preference for males.

During this same time, the crime rate doubles. 90% of crime is committed by men.

Excellent opportunity for statistical analysis of the impacts because the policy was not implemented in all provinces at the same time. This means that the effects occur at different times across the provinces.

Extra males came about because of enormous investment in one-child families wanting sons. These were not neglected children.

a 0.01 increase in sex ratio is associated with a 3% increase in crime.

Causality: taking the year of implementation, were able to use the year of the one child policy was implemented as a proxy instead of the actually sex ratio.

Looking at crime rates across 19th century America, the crime rates are highest in newly settled areas where men moved into the region at an earlier time than women. Crime rates dropped when women moved into the area and the sex ratio came closer to 1.

....

Predictions of family impacts:

relative to monogamy, polygyny also impacts parental investments.

empirical predictions: 19th century Mormon Communities in Utah.

Wealthy men had an average of 3.2 wives compared to 1.4 among the poor. Wealthy men had more offspring. Had longer reproductive careers.

Poor mens children had better survival rate 6.9 lived to 15 rather than 5.7 per wife for wealthy men.

Children from polygynous societies: Poorer nutritional status for the children of polygamous mothers than monogamous ones.

analysis controlled for wealth and other characteristics.

Study using data from 22 sub saharan african countries showed significant child mortality risks with polygamy.

Anderson studied 22 monogamous and 22 polygamous families in South Africa. Wrote about benifits of polygamy - showed that sororal polygamy had highest survivial rates for children 4.7 vs 4 for monogamy vs 3.87 for general monogamy.

Internal competition among wives, jealousy, etc. causes higher rates of psychological disorders, compulsion, depression, etc in a study of Arab women.

Hadly study showed no difference between monogamy and polygamy in a Hadley study in East Africa.

No studies showed that polygamy is better than monogamy.

Cultural group selection for social norms that have higher group benefits. It spread because it gives an advantage to a society in competition with other societies.

Monogamous marriages has evolved to harness pair bonding and paternal investment.
Mr. Jones led Dr. Henrich through a summary of his presentation with comments about the harms of polygamy and the strength of causation. Amicus has no objection.

First the question was related to harm to the participants.
With respect to infant mortality and harms to children, the data are primarily from Africa and it is difficult to extrapolate to North America. It cannot be seperated with the existing sample size.

For psycho social harms to women, there is more data with respect to harms to women. However, this is still difficult to seperate from the overall cultural backgrounds.

In terms of crime and violence, there are more risk factors in a theoretical sense. However, there is more likelihood of these harms. They do not have practical examples at present (footprints in the sand) to back this up.

Harms to society.

With respect to excess males. This is the most reliable data due to cross-matched data from China etc. This has the highest confidence.

With respect to earlier sexualization of young women. This flows directly from the mathematics of polygamy. The age depression effect is well documented through dominant men taking eligible women from the marriage pool. This drives polygynous men and would be polygynous men to take younger wives.

Polygyny tends to decrease gender equality because it incentivises males to control women. In New Guinie, there was the same institutionalized swapping of brides among families that has been documented in the FLDS community in Colorado city.

Regarding a demographic analysis of the FLDS side of Bountiful community. The data came from Mr. Wickett (FLDS lawyer). This is the only hard demographic numbers for any polygynous society in North America that he knows of. There are 30 men and 30 women in monagamous marriages. There are 2 men with 5 wives ...

There are 33 males and 22 females that are unmarried.

Unmarried total population of unmarried is equal with 79 of each.

There is one 17 yr old male, 5 16 yr old males, etc.

The table looks like what was expected. THere are missing males that came about in late adolecents. It is in the 83% of the cross cultural index - quite high rate of polygyny - on a 0 to 3 scale, it is in the highest level. It is the only discrete community in Canada that has provided this sort of data. One possibility is that our values - healthcare, democracy, etc. stops the practice of polygyny from spreading.

Refering to the work of Dr. Shackleford - on domestic violence, homocide, etc. There are very strong increases in the likelihood of children being at risk in homes iwth step parents. There is also indication of increasing inter-spousal violence related to the age gap between spouses. Shacklefords work is restricted to monogamous marriages. Dr. H. has simply extrapolated this data to polygamous families. There are many more unrelated pairs (parents and children) when you add additional wives to a family. The number of unrelated pairs increases as the square of the number of wives. If you extrapolate Shackelfords data, everything should be worse in polygamous households.

Regarding tables produced by Dr. Woo - used in his testimony of Monday. Both tables show similar things. In each age catagories, there is already additional single men vs single women in the Canadian census data. Perhaps there are many informal marriage like arrangements like common law marriages. It is likely that the lower status (lower aged) men are not married yet, but are going to get married. This is simply a snap-shot in time. According to demographers, more males are born than females. When polygyny exists, the sex ratio is exacerbated. In terms of increase in criminality, if there is 50,000 unmarriageable men, does it matter weather the starting point is 100,000 or 0. No, it is a linear relationship. Any additional unmarriageable men affects the system.

Those who are inclined to polygamy, criminalization does not deter the practice. Because the size of the polygamous community is so small, the surplus men from polygamous communities will not impact the overall pool of surplus men in a significant way. Dr. H. asserts that any surplus men will increase the crime rate.

Polygyny is a “ready response” programmed in our species. Even if we put aside Canadians who have adopted Canadian social values - there is a likelihood that if polygamy were de-criminalized that Canada would become the destination of choice for polygamous families who want to immigrate to the West. Fertility is always higher in polygynous communities so these communities will grow faster than the general population. It is possible that polygyny could quickly spread among the general population. If high status people like actors, etc. took additional wives, this could quickly be followed by the rest of the population.

The idea of serial monogamy shows that the psychology of polygamy is already present. In this case, the older wife is simply discarded in favour of a younger wife. He is often asked why we aren’t already a polygynous society. In response, he asks this question. Say you are in love with two men. One is a billionaire but married and the other is a normal guy but single. The women in his classes, as high as 75 to 100% say that they would become the second wife of the billionaire -regardless of being second wife - with all other things being equal. Perhaps this shows the seeds of polygamy are already in our society.

Amicus Cross examination by Mr. McIntosh.

referring to first affidavit on page two, para 5. Mr. Jones had contacted him in March to ask if he would be interested in looking at polygamy and the purported harms. Did Mr. Jones specifically ask him to look at the problem of unmarried men and the marriage age of young women. Mr. Jones had advised him to look at the topics of unmarried young men and the age of young women. Dr. H. is not sure if this came from the conversations, but they certainly came up quickly as sure as he began to look at the literature. They are very commonly understood concepts and universal in the literature.

Referring to a document documenting the harms of polygamy in para 25 on page 10. Refers to women marrying too young. Next refers to surplus young men. The document was from February 2010 and he was retained in March 2010. Prior to this date, he has never published on polygamy in his life. Dr. H. affirmed that this was true. He has never done any direct research on polygamy. Dr. H. confirmed this.

Mr. McIntosh asserted that much of the data in Dr. H. work does not come from polygamy directly but comes from other sources woven into his current understanding on polygamy. His 2 main harms are the same as the AG already asserted. When he focused on these as the two main harms of polygamy - it is focus on polygamy per se, rather than bad conduct that can occur in both monogamy and polygamy. Is this not true? Dr. H. asserted that he had an intitial theory and he simply followed his theory in looking at the data. Naturally, these harms can happen in all forms of marriage but Dr. H contends that these happen more frequently in polygamy.

Mr. Mc. offers that these same harms happen in both poly and mono - and are not unique to poly.

Mr Mc. offered that there are different types of polygamy - polygyny, same sex female unions,

Dr. H. indicates that anthropology does not deal with this.

What about 3 men?

Dr. H. Anthropological literature does not deal with this.

Mr. Mc. - points out that Dr. H. originally starts off discussing polygamy generally, but quickly changes to polygyny. Restricted work to polygyny rather than general.

yes.

Mr. Mc. Did the AG direct you to do this or did you do it yourself?

Dr. H. The work quickly suggested that he follow the path of polygyny because this is where the harms were most obvious.

MR. Mc. Did you find the same types of harms in other forms of polygamy.
Dr, H. No, only in polygyny

Mr. Mc. In terms of your affidavit, are you representing to the court that what is in exhibit B is true.

Dr. H. It is as true as any of my research papers.

Mr. Mc. Are you staking your professional reputation on the reliability of this work?

Dr. H. yes, I am planning to prepare a publication based on this work.

Mr. Mc. Referring to a conclusion that there is a non-trivial increase in the incidence of polygyny would cause an increase in crime. Do you believe this would occur?

Dr. H. yes

Mr. Mc. You are not a criminalogist, or a lawyer, yet you say that polygyny would increase if it were legalized in Canada? is this true?

Dr. H. yes

Mr. Mc. One of your propositions is that rich alpha males would marry many women if the state legalized polygamy.

Dr. H. yes - this is quite plausible.

Mr. Mc. Do you recognize that we are talking about whether there is a difference between de-criminalizing polygamy versus legalizing it.

Dr. H. We are getting into a terminological mess.

Mr. Jones: Objected that this legalese is just confusing the court.

Mr. Mc. Objection is not appropriate. Do you know the difference between de-criminalization versus legalization?

Dr. H. No.

Mr. Mc. All your talk is about saying what will happen with rich men if society says it is all right?

Dr. H. All I can say is what the data says in the paper.

Mr. Mc. When you gave the opinion that polygamy would likely increase if it were de-criminalized, did you know that there were many very reputable opinions that say just the opposite?
Dr. H. yes.

Mr. Mc. In the Canadian law review from 1985 it says that polygamy, like adultery is a marginal practice that corresponds to no legal or social practice. It has existed in many instances, like hippy communes in the sixties - and since it is so foreign to our legal system and culture that it will not catch on in our society.

Dr. H. He was not aware of this paper. He is interested in what the evidence was.

Mr. MC. your lead-in proposition is that legalization will quite plausibly lead to more polygamy.

Mr. H. Yes. Based on my studies, I think this is right.

Mr. Mc. I presume that you have studied how often section 293 has been used and what it has been used for?

Dr. H. I did not

When you used the words that you thought it would increase, you were aware that it has been rarely used. That it has ONLY been used once in over 110 yrs ago for an aboriginal family and 100 yrs ago in a non-plyg setting and 73 years ago in a non plyg setting?

Dr. H. No I was not aware.

Mr. Mc. In the sciences, you are not supposed to look at a common sense, real world check so it will not conflict with the theory. In the social sciences, are you not allowed to look at the society around you to see if something makes sense?

Dr. H. No - that is why I travel to remote societies to see what happens there.

In all your time in Canada - did you ever hear someone say that they can’t wait until section 293 is dropped so I can marry another wife.

Dr. H. no.

Mr. Mc. Should you use your active life experience against your theories?
Dr. H, No - never.

Dr. H. Can I speak as to why I say that polygamy can spread?

yes,

Dr. H. Monogamy and christianity became infused in about the 4 CE. And this began to spread in the nobility of europe. Canada has had a judeo christian background, and monogamy is based on this. Many new immigrants are coming from africa and other places where this is not the norm.

Mr. Mc. You mention that a pool of unmarried men should increase the rates of murder, rape and robbery. A male who has no opportunity for marriage will engage in risky behaviour, ie murder, robbery, etc. in order to obtain a wife. More men than women equals crime.

Dr. H. yes.

I want to challenge some reasoning. In report you take us to China and you show that there are more boys than girls growing up. More boys than girls equals more crime.

Dr : yes - however, I did not do original research, I just relied on a published paper.

Mr. M : This is unfortunately, we cannot cross examine the authors of the report. however, the papers shows that a small increase in the amount of men simply will double the crime rate because this paper indicates it.

Dr. H. However, I would not put it so simply

Mr. M. You are putting this in front of us saying that more extra men equals more murder , etc.

I would not say that on any one paper.

Mr. M. However you want the court to take away that a small increase in the number of men will cause in increase in the murder rate. however, the authors also suggest that this should not be the case. The economy is growing, and the population is shrinking, so the murder rate should go down. It should follow that the heavy desire for male children should mean that there is a major investment in these favoured children and this child investment should result in less crime.

Dr. H. However, this is not the case so that is why it is surprizing.

Mr. Mc. Is it also not true that this data has absolutely nothing to do with polygamy?
Dr. H. True

Mr. M: Did not this same time period correspond for the largest migration from rural to an urban setting? Also this same time period coincides with tianamon square - and it is well known that the Chinese government has used crime statistics as a means to act against the pro-democracy movement. How can we rely on these statistics. Can these things simply be normalized away?

Dr. H. Unless you believe the statistics are manipulated in the direction of what you are looking for you should believe them.

Mr. M. In your comments on the FLDS statistical data, you mention that this is data from the only polygynous community in Canada. This is the most polygynous community in all of Canada. 60 are monogamous (30 men and 30 women). 55 people are polygynous. 15 men and 40 women. 33 unmarried men and 22 unmarried women. 48 men and 66 women in total are either polygamous or unmarried adults. Correct?

Dr. H. yes

Any man who leaves Bountiful is able to stay single, get married outside or get gay married?

Dr. H. yes.

Referring to Dr. Woo’s demographic data in terms of the unmarried men. there are 550,000 more men than women in Canada according to the 2006 census. These men have never married. In the 2002 census data, this is essentially the same. Almost 500,000 men are never married. These are not lost boys?

Dr. H. No

Mr. M. This is not due to polygamy?
Dr. H, No

According to Dr. Woo. there are 905,000 divorced men in Canada - men who once had mates but do not now. Do you accept this data?

Dr. H. yes.

Does this have anything to do with polygamy?

Dr. H. It is still the case that almost everyone in Canada gets married.

Yes and once all the men on this page get married there are 500,000 more each year.

Dr. H. yes

Mr. M. Do you know the legal age of marriage in BC?

Dr. H. not sure - 16?

Mr. M. 16 with parental consent - 19 without parental consent. From our opening statement, we spoke of this pool of unmarried men as being statistically meaningless. At this time, you stated that we did not understand. Also you suggested that if Canada de-criminalized polygamy that it would become a destination for polygamists?

I believe it is plausible.

Are you aware that Canada can set any immigration rules that it desires?

yes

Are you aware that contemporary research said that if canada de-criminalized homosexuality that it would become a destination for homosexuals?

I believe that happened - that it appeared in the contemporary literature.

Mr. McIntosh. Completed with witness.

Cross examine from BCCLA (Monique)

Would you agree that Canada is dominantly a monogamous society?

Yes.

Do you agree that Canada will not become a dominantly polygamous society?

yes

Are you not just creating a model and making predictions - is this not speculation?

All we can do is make a model, test it, and make predicitons.

Would you not agree that Canada makes definite steps to promote the ethos of human rights respect?

yes

Would you not agree that Canada invests a great deal to promote the well-being of children, education, etc

yes

Does this not impact the effect of how Canada would change if we de-criminalized polygamy?

It would depend on how the policies are formed.

Do you not agree that the priority on human rights that the institutions we have formed in Canada would have a social impact on the de-criminalization of polygamy in Canada?

I can’t speak to that.

Would it not be fair to say that it might be helpful to have a sociologist determine how Canadian institutions would impact the effects of polygamy in Canada? You are not a sociologist are you?

No but I have written many articles in journals of sociology.

In a country like Canada - we have a very specific culture and set of institutions that have a very high regard for equality etc. Would not this restrict a leap to polygamy?

We do not now all the factors involved, I want to agree with you but I don’t know.

Do you believe that Canadian women would abandon the rights that we now have and this would lead to a leap to polygamy?

This might not happen tomorrow - however, if Polygamy were decriminalized we don’t know what would happen in a 50 years period.

Monique: Do you believe that Canadian women would freely give up the rights that had to work so hard to obtain?

Dr, H. I don’t know

Monique; I would submit to you that we would not.