This post originally appeared on The 19th.
For the first two years of her son’s life, Kris Williams read him the book “Love You Forever” before bedtime most nights. She took him to the park every Saturday.
In the middle of the pandemic, Williams cut out the cardboard babies on the front of diaper boxes and set them around the house — imaginary friends for W. when he couldn’t safely socialize. (The 19th has used only his first initial to protect his privacy.)
Two years after their son’s birth, Williams and her wife, Rebekah Wilson, had started to split.
The split was nasty, Williams said, but she wasn’t prepped for the news she would receive at the couple’s divorce hearing in Oklahoma City last January.
Williams and Wilson are legally married and decided to have W. together, according to Williams, with Wilson carrying the baby. But within 15 minutes of the hearing starting, Oklahoma County District Court Judge Lynne McGuire declared that because Williams had not adopted her son, she was not his legal parent. McGuire ordered that Williams be struck from W.’s birth certificate. In her place would go the couple’s sperm donor, who was now petitioning for custody.
“My body instantly started shaking,” Williams said. “I mean pure terror, as a queer person, to be erased.”
Williams has filed a motion to reconsider her case that is set to be heard on June 1. If the case makes its way to the appellate court, the ACLU of Oklahoma plans to step in, said Williams’ attorney Hanna Roberts. Wilson and her lawyer declined multiple requests for an interview.
Williams’ case represents a nightmare scenario for many LGBTQ+ parents, who still lack the same rights granted to their heterosexual peers through marriage.
“The concern is if Kris loses, that’s going to set some pretty bad precedent in the state of Oklahoma, and possibly beyond,” Roberts said. “I think that this is just the first time that there has been such an adverse ruling that is so contrary to equal protection. It’s gotten the attention because same sex-couples get divorced all the time.”
According to Williams, the couple found Harlan Vaughn on a paternity website together, and the three agreed that he would be involved at a distance. W. was born August 8, 2019. They named him after Williams’ uncle, she said.
