Gay 'marriage' splits tribe
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY
January 6, 2006

The top court of the Cherokee Nation has declined to strike down a homosexual "marriage" in a pioneering case in American Indian country, the couple and officials say.

Kathy Reynolds, 29, and Dawn McKinley, 34, "married" in May 2004 in Oklahoma, just weeks after San Francisco ignored state law by giving marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Because tribal law at the time did not bar same-sex "marriages," a tribal clerk gave them a wedding certificate. The rest