Marriage Act opponents speak out
Claim Navajo Nation government is trying to legalize discrimination

By Pamela G. Dempsey
Diné Bureau

GALLUP — Someday, when Louva Hartwell comes home to the Navajo Nation, she hopes to return to the inclusive and tolerant traditions she grew up with.

The gay, single mother lives in Phoenix now for the economic opportunities. Returning to the Navajo Nation, though, is part of her future plans.

However, Hartwell and the more than 1,000 people who have signed a petition opposing the Diné Marriage Act, are afraid the Navajo Nation government is taking the first steps to legalize discrimination.

"I don't like the message it sends to my daughter, that gay people are second-class citizens," Hartwell said.

The Navajo Nation Council will consider on Friday a measure to override Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr.'s veto of the Diné Marriage Act, an amendment to Title Nine of the Navajo Nation Code that prohibits same-sex marriages, plural marriages, and marriages between blood relatives.

Sponsor Larry Anderson has called the act a promotion of family values; Shirley called it unnecessary legislation.

The Diné Coalition for Cultural Preservation, a grassroots organization opposed to Anderson's legislation, has called the act discriminatory and oppressive.

While the group supports family values, members said they would like to see the prohibition of same-sex marriages removed from the act.

"Passage of the Diné Marriage Act of 2005 will undermine the effort of ensuring healthy families by invoking blatant discrimination toward 'different' members of the family structure," the group stated in an on-line petition.

At a press conference Wednesday, the tribe's Treaty Day, the group encouraged the council to not override Shirley's veto.

"Let it be made clear that we do not have an issue with procreation, but with how the issue of marriage has become a disguise to promote the beginning of legalized discrimination toward a segment of our society," representatives said. "We ask you, the Navajo Nation Council, to be cognizant of the oppression that has been dealt with on all Native Peoples for hundreds of years and to not pick up the tools of the oppressors."

In a later interview, Sherrick Roanhorse, one of the group's members, said the Diné Marriage Act was one against tradition.

"It's an act against tradition," Roanhorse said, "tradition based on inclusion and tolerance."

Vivian Arviso, a supportive mother, said the act ignores cultural knowledge and values.

"It's a non-Navajo issue being brought in from white America and being made a Navajo issue," Arviso said.

The act, she said, begins to divide people.

"We need to have healthy families," Arviso said. "The problem is really, if we don't support young people, if we don't give them a sense of well-being, then we create this dysfunction. The legislation .... is blaming gay people for lack of family values among men and women."

Families, Roanhorse said, are defined in several ways now, with grandparents raising grandchildren, for example.

"We're acting as oppressors," Roanhorse said of the act. "If the legislation passes we're not a good example to Indian Country."

Carrie House, another opponent of the legislation, called the act disrespectful.

"Navajo oral traditions of the Nadleeh were and are about Nadleeh being revered, held in high-esteem, are balancing factors in culture, language, arts, society, economy, and most important, maintaining good family ties and values," House stated of the traditional reference to a two-spirited person. "To say gay people are ruining lives is false ... when did Christian values become traditional for Navajo culture?"

House and her partner were married last year in New Mexico, the last of 65 same-sex couples to receive marriage license in Bernalillo County.

Marriage, she said, will always happen.

"To me, marriage is very special," she said, "because if you love someone, no one is going to take that right away; no one is going to separate that love."

For more information log on to http://www.dinecoalition.com

— To contact reporter Pam Dempsey call (505) 879-1707 or email pamelagdempsey@msn.com