updates on kathy and dawn

all right folks. sorry my posts have been hit-and-miss, but work has loomed heavy and i had a bit of the flu hit me for a couple of days. i have some belated updates on kathy and dawn's story, plus some excellent reading this week.

first up:

happily ever after made indefinite for kathy and dawn
the tulsa world reported a while back, again on the front page but this time below the fold, that kathy reynolds and dawn mckinley face a new legal challenge in attempts to have their anomalous lesbian marriage fully recognized by the cherokee tribe.

the two women had obtained a marriage certificate by a cherokee tribal clerk in a push to challenge the language of the tribe’s constitution. but the clerk, opponents allege, should not have issued the paperwork in the first place.

a tribal appeals court had thrown out an attempt by a cherokee attorney to nullify the marriage after months of legal wrangles, but days afterward, tribal councilors filed suit based on the same arguments.

the appeals court stated that todd hembree could not personally prove he would be harmed by their marriage. holy shit, that sounds like an application of simple rationale.

but democracy wouldn’t be any fun if we were to regularly apply reason to issues of personal freedom. that's todd there at the top of the post, by the way. isn't he just cute as hell?

the zeitgeist of the cherokee tribe on many issues tends to parallel whatever the popular position of the rest of the country is on many issues, particularly social issues. but often, political exploitation underlines the debate.

hembree, for instance, initiated his law suit during a time when he was running for state office in a primary campaign. he was beaten badly. i mean badly. but he had to prove his attack on kathy and dawn wasn’t a political maneuver by maintaining the suit. even more hilarious, he was an active volunteer in brad carson's bid for the senate. doug dodd made brad carson look like strom thurmond.

when it’s been suggested to hembree that he needed to sustain his suit simply to save face, he’s vehemently denied the accusation and argued he was simply trying to uphold what he believed was tribal law – the cherokee constitution, before and after the tribal council’s reinterpretation, prohibited same-sex marriage, he says.

this is a joke, and the cherokee tribe’s leadership should drop this ridiculous nonsense. and if you don’t believe this is ridiculous nonsense, consider the following statement by tribal councilor linda o’leary who claimed “necessity” brought about the tribe’s petition:

“we don’t want gay marriages in the cherokee nation. it’s that simple. we do have standing in this case because we’re the ones who make the laws."

the tribal council may maintain the authority, but does it have the precedence? that question should at least be considered in the context of the appellate judge’s opinion.

government bodies have the “standing” to make all sorts of decisions, but that doesn’t mean every decision they make is just.

the cherokee tribe’s leadership proved in print it can find no legitimate reason other than discrimination to limit marriage certificates to heterosexual couples.

might the real strategy for the lgbt community be to consider the full nullification of all special rights granted to heterosexual couples as long as gay couples are discriminated against? that pursuit might change the national debate entirely.