Winston Blackmore and James Marion Oler, who has five wives, face up to five years in prison after being found guilty in the first real test of the country's polygamy law, enacted 127 years ago. Judge Sheri Ann Donegan of the British Columbia Supreme Court noted in her ruling that the main defendant, Blackmore, did not deny his polygamy. "His adherence to the practices and beliefs of the FLDS is not in dispute," she said. The two men are senior figures in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamist religious sect that broke away from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church. The sect has been based for nearly 60 years in the remote, mountainous region of British Columbia near the US border where the community grows, raises or hunts its own food and runs a barter economy.

Source: The Nation Bangkok July 24, 2017 23:26 UTC