The highest Cherokee Indian court in America has decided not to strike down the first gay marriage in Indian country."Cherokee tribal members Kathy Reynolds, 29, and Dawn McKinley, 34, married in May 2004 in Oklahoma, just weeks after the city of San Francisco ignited a national debate on gay marriage by briefly allowing same-sex couples to wed ... Because tribal law at the time allowed same-sex marriages, a tribal clerk gave them a wedding certificate. But members in the Tribal Council sued, saying the marriage would damage the reputation of the Cherokees, and the law was later changed. In a December 22 decision announced on Wednesday, the Judicial Appeals Tribunal of the Cherokee Nation, the tribe's highest court in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, rejected the request for an injunction against the marriage."
While the decision to changing back the law to make gay marriage illegal again is a disappointment, it’s nice that the Cherokee court decided not to take away something that had already been given to this couple. They wouldn’t want to be known as… uh… never mind.
Anyway, this is the kind of wisdom and consideration we’ve come to expect from the American Indian Community. After all, these people did figure out how to use the whole buffalo.
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