It’s unclear whether Native American opposition to gay marriage comes primarily from tradition or from the influence of most U.S. states, where it is still illegal. A Navajo group’s battle to overturn a tribal ban on same-sex unions has become a microcosm of this question, Al Jazeera America reported.
Alray Nelson, founder of the Coalition for Navajo Equality, says he wants the Navajo Nation to respect gay relationships like two of the states that surround its territory — New Mexico, where gay marriage was legalized this month, and Utah, where it was recently ruled legal but faces a mounting appeal.
“There’s no organized faction against this, like in the fight (for) Proposition 8 in California,” said Nelson, 27, whose organization is seeking to make tribal legislators review a 2005 tribal ban on gay marriage early next year.
Opposition to the review may not be organized, but it exists.
Deswood Tome, special adviser to Navajo Nation President Ben Shelly, told Al Jazeera that although Navajo respect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Navajo, marriage is traditionally between a man and woman.
Tome referred to a traditional phrase in the Navajo language that “means that ‘a man and woman come together.’ That’s our core belief as Navajo people … I’ve never heard of a man and man.”
The Navajo Nation does not see its current legislation prohibiting gay marriage as an affront to LGBT people, Tome said.
“The Navajo Nation Council doesn’t look at this as an ‘anti’ issue. There are many gays and lesbians who are Navajo. The way we look at it is that they are people, just like heterosexuals. They’re the same,” he said.
Tome, who Navajo Nation public relations staff said was the tribal president’s aide most familiar with the issue of gay marriage, initially said he did not know the exact status of the legislation barring gay marriage, or the president’s stance on the issue.
“I have to call the president and ask him,” he said in a telephone interview.
Later, he called back and said Shelly “basically reaffirmed what I was telling you about Navajo beliefs.”
“But as far as him personally … he says it is their personal choice. So, if two men want to tie the knot, it’s up to them.”
Darryl Tso, another special adviser to the Navajo government who Tome indicated may better know the existing legislation and movements against it, had not responded to an interview request from Al Jazeera at the time of publication.
Although Tome’s interpretation of Navajo social mores indicate that Nelson’s group may face some opposition because of tribal tradition, activists note that the original legislation banning gay marriage on Navajo land took root because of D.C. politics.
“Back in 2005, the Tribal Council passed this law. It was a reactionary law. At the time, President Bush was pushing for a definition of marriage at a national level,” Nelson said. In 2004, then-President George W. Bush started a push for a constitutional amendment that would solidify the principles of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which the Supreme Court reviewed this year.
Two spirits
Some members of other Native American tribes echoed Nelson’s opinion that legislation banning gay marriage comes from non-Native Americans.
In October, two gay men became the third same-sex couple to be officially married by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes. Their territory is surrounded by Oklahoma, where gay marriage remains illegal and faces much opposition.
After their marriage, a high-level official called a tribal meeting to discuss measures to block such unions, said Cheyenne and Arapaho Lt. Gov. Amber Bighorse-Suitor.
“I was surprised when this broke that there was any opposition in the tribe. The attitude in Oklahoma seems to have infiltrated some of our tribal attitudes,” she said.
The discourse on banning gay marriage went nowhere, Bighorse-Suitor said, because the tribal Constitution prevents the government from making laws that discriminate against tribe members on the basis of sexual orientation.
Bighorse-Suitor said opposition to gay marriage was introduced into the Cheyenne and Arapaho cultures from the outside.
“The younger people have grown up not inheriting that attitude,” she said, “Native cultures might be more likely to go in the opposite direction, incorporating these ideals that come from Anglo religions into their mindset.”
Bighorse-Suitor noted that in many Native American cultures, gay people have “always been honored” as “two-spirit people” endowed with spiritual talents.
Fortunately, this is no longer an issue, since marriage between any unrelated adult human beings is now legal throughout the United States – though satanically possessed heterosexist Nazis in our government, in their insatiable lust for vagina and their obsession with what other men do with their penises, are bent on destroying the lives of homosexuals, and anti-LGBT terrorism remains something we must remain vigilant against.