Polygamist Blackmore plans tell-all podcast
‘Unshackled’ father of 149 children unrepentant despite looming threat of jail
Expect to hear more, not less, from Winston Blackmore now that his conviction for polygamy has been officially registered in the B.C. Supreme Court.
Flanked by eight of his adult daughters (he has 149 children) and one of his 24 wives, Blackmore said Friday: “I’m going to start telling my story online right away. I feel I’m unshackled and I’m going to start doing that ... I’m going to start from the very beginning of my life, which is quite unusual.”
Unusual is a vast understatement, but public relations offensives are not. Reality shows like Sister Wives have turned a few fundamentalist Mormons into celebrities as they try to influence opinion by showing the happy side of polygamy and get the laws changed.
And Blackmore has never been shy in front cameras or microphones. Back in 2005 when pressure was mounting on the B.C. attorney general by former members of the Bountiful community to prosecute Blackmore and others, Blackmore and some of his wives went on CNN with Larry King and on the Dr. Phil Show.
He and his wives also organized a polygamy summit in Creston, where Blackmore first admitted that he had had “several” underage brides.
Blackmore’s podcast plan comes after his last-ditch attempt to have his polygamy conviction stayed, overturned or quashed was soundly rejected by Justice Sheri Donegan.
She dismissed every aspect of a scattergun constitutional application that claimed everything from officially induced error to abuse of judicial process to an assertion of Blackmore’s right to freely practice his fundamentalist Mormon religion.
His arguments centred on a 1992 press release issued by B.C.’s criminal justice branch outlining the reasons that Blackmore and another church elder, Dalmon Oler, would not be charged. It said that the attorney general had legal opinions that concluded that the law against polygamy was unconstitutional.
In the application and his subsequent testimony, Blackmore — who had only six wives at the time — took that to mean that polygamy was legal.
But as the judge noted, the press release didn’t only say that Blackmore and Oler wouldn’t be prosecuted. It went on to explain that there was a need to enact a new law and that the B.C. attorney general would be meeting with federal counterparts to “discuss issues around polygamy and measures to protect women and children in a patriarchal society.”
Even if Blackmore had relied on a press release for legal advice, everything changed in 2011 — everything, except Blackmore’s behaviour.
Following a lengthy constitutional reference case, B.C. Chief Justice Robert Bauman ruled that the inherent harms of polygamy justified the infringement on religious freedom, as well as on the guarantees of free association and free expression.
In other words, the law was valid and enforceable.
During the December hearing on this application, Blackmore admitted that he continues to have multiple wives in a cluster of homes in Bountiful. He testified that plural marriage is of “critical importance” to his faith and his salvation.
Since Blackmore testified that he still believes that and that he still practices polygamy, the judge tartly concluded: “He has never relied upon the legal status of the (Criminal Code) provision in governing his affairs.”
Friday’s decision likely won’t either. Blackmore did, however, tell journalists outside the court: “I’m not going to say that we are going to defy the judge’s decision. That would be silliness.”
He also said: “At the end of the day, we need to be people who try to respect the laws of our country.”
Yet, even after Friday’s ruling, his own conviction and the constitutional reference case, Blackmore maintained that the Charter of Rights ought to protect him and others like him — just as it does same-sex couples and adulterers.
“Polygamy itself was driven underground for so many years, and I have felt and my family has felt like if there’s a principle worth living, why can’t we just be open about it?”
For now, Blackmore is mum on whether he plans to appeal further. Facing a maximum penalty of up to five years in jail, he is waiting until after his sentencing.
Blackmore’s sentencing hearing is set for May 15 along with that of co-defendant Oler, who has had five wives.
Oler, another former bishop of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, provided no evidence that he took legal advice from the press release.
In fact, Oler seems not to have taken any legal advice at all, choosing instead to blindly follow the directions of the church prophet Warren Jeffs.
Oler chose to have no lawyer at this trial, or at a previous one where he was acquitted of unlawful removal of his 15-yearold daughter from Canada for a polygamous marriage in the United States.
It was only because of Joe Doyle, the amicus curiae (a court-appointed lawyer whose job was to assist the judge), that Oler was involved in the constitutional application.
But as with Blackmore, the judge rejected Doyle’s “able, and creative, arguments” on Oler’s behalf.
She said it was “incumbent on Mr. Oler to establish that he turned his mind to whether it might be illegal to enter into the marriages ... and that he then relied on the government’s advice in proceeding with the marriages in the mistaken belief that they were legal.”
But since he didn’t testify, “I am not persuaded that is the case.”