Live
Audio Only
Twelve years ago, the Cherokee Nation declared that the tribe only recognized heterosexual marriages. But last week that decision was overturned, paving the way for a new era of queer unions within the tribal community.
RELATED:
47 Years After Stonewall: The Struggle Beyond Marriage Equality
The tribe’s attorney general, Todd Hembree, released a 12-page statement on the issue Friday, writing, “The magnitude of the question presented is not lost on this office … (my only concern) is whether the same-sex marriage ban under Cherokee law can constitutionally operate to deny benefits to Cherokee citizens based upon the same.”
Hembree cited a long history of same-sex marriages within the Cherokee nation over the course of centuries. At one point, he described a ceremony in the 1830s which “in some respects would seem to parallel a modern-day same-sex marriage in the depth of its commitment, its permanence and its recognition by the other members of the tribe.”
In 2004, after two Cherokee women, Dawn McKinley and Kathy Reynolds, were issued a marriage license, the tribe's then-attorney general deemed it invalid. A law then followed suit, effectively banning same-sex unions.
“A lot of time has passed since then,” Chrissi Nimmo, assistant attorney general for the Cherokee Nation, told the Tulsa World News. “And a lot of social changes have happened.”
Even Chad Smith, who served as the Cherokee Nation’s principal chief in 2004 and who had signed the previous same-sex marriage ban into law, supported Hembree’s decision.
“(The 2004 ban) was adhering to past Cherokee law,” he told the News. “But our constitution incorporates the provisions of the U.S. Constitution, and the (U.S.) Supreme Court has since made its ruling.”
Newsletter
