Attorney: Tribal Same-Sex 'Marriage' Case Could Be End-Run Around Okla. Law
by Allie Martin
August 2, 2005
(AgapePress) - An attorney with the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy says a case before the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma could have a far reaching impact on recognition of same-sex "marriage" throughout the United States. The case involves two women who contend they have a right to marriage under tribal law.
Kathy Reynolds (28) and Dawn McKinley (33) requested and received a marriage application from the Cherokee Nation last year at the urging of a local Cherokee nationalist and homosexual rights activist, not long after an incident in which McKinley was barred from Reynolds' hospital room because she was not family. According to a Washington Post report, the couple said they had simply "wanted recognition for our relationship" and were told that Cherokee law did not exclude same-sex marriages.
Reynolds and McKinley held a wedding ceremony on tribal land. But today they are appearing in court for a hearing to determine whether they are actually married under Cherokee law. Although the women claim they have a right to have to be recognized as married under the laws of the Cherokee Nation, the Tribal Council disagrees.
When Reynolds and McKinley attempted to file their application with the tribe a year ago to make their "marriage" official, they found that a tribal judge had issued an injunction, thus preventing theirs from becoming the first same-sex marriage recognized under Cherokee law. Soon afterward a lawyer for the Tribal Council asked the tribal court to nullify the marriage. The members of the council then voted unanimously to pass a measure limiting marriage to a union between a man and woman in order to clarify what they considered to be ambiguous language in the law.
A Marriage Battle Crossing Tribal and State Boundaries
The two women have taken the matter to a district court and, denied a summary judgment, appealed to the tribe's Judicial Appeals Tribunal (JAT). Now, as the matter goes before the court in Tulsa, pro-family forces and defense-of-marriage advocates in Oklahoma and across the United States are following the case with interest. Steve Crampton, chief counsel with the AFA Center for Law & Policy, believes the outcome could have a major impact on marriage laws in other states.
"The good news," Crampton points out, "is that the tribe has already decided as a blanket proposition that marriage shall consist only of one man and one woman for the Cherokee Nation." But the bad news, he adds, is that this particular lawsuit presents a unique exception to that general proposition because Reynolds and McKinley "already obtained a license and were, theoretically at least, married."
Although the lesbian couple claim the battle is a personal one, Crampton believes homosexual activists are at work in the controversy. "What you see here is the radical organizations like the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force pursuing their same-sex marriage case," he says, "even to the extremes of taking it into the tribal courts and the Indian nation."
The long and the short of it, the AFA Law Center spokesman says, is that homosexual activists "will stop at nothing to get their agenda enacted into law." But while states must recognize the sovereignty of American Indian tribes like the Cherokee Nation, Crampton points out that a federal marriage amendment would supercede even tribal laws.
Tribal Council attorney Todd Hembree contends that the original Cherokee Nation tribal statute regarding marriage, if read in its entirety, left no doubt that it meant for marriage to be between a man and a woman. His firm belief, he says, is that marriage is "not gender neutral, it's gender specific -- and I do not want the laws of the Cherokee Nation and my tribe to be made a mockery of."
The lawyer, who is challenging McKinley and Reynolds' marriage in court as a private citizen, also asserts that the majority of the people in the Cherokee Nation support traditional marriage. He notes that in the 14 Oklahoma counties where Cherokees live, voters supported the state constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
Hembree has said he is challenging the legality of the couple's marriage because he feels strongly that the laws of the Cherokee Nation laws "have to stand for something." He is quoted in the Washington Post as saying he views this effort to establish homosexual marriage rights through the tribal courts as an attempt "to circumvent Oklahoma law."
Allie Martin, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
