The Tulsa Couple Who Helped Win Marriage Equality for Oklahoma

You might not know their names. That's the thing about the people who actually do the hard, slow, grinding work of civil rights litigation — they don't end up on monuments or in textbooks the way the Supreme Court justices do. But in Oklahoma, two Tulsans named Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin filed a federal lawsuit in 2004 that became a cornerstone of the legal movement that ended marriage discrimination in this country.

Their story belongs to Tulsa. It's worth knowing.

Who Were Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin?

Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin were a Tulsa couple who had been together for years when Oklahoma voters approved State Question 711 in 2004 — a constitutional amendment that defined marriage as solely between one man and one woman. The amendment passed with 76 percent of the vote. It was one of eleven such amendments approved by states across the country that November, on the same ballot that reelected George W. Bush.

Bishop and Baldwin were not activists by profession. They were a couple who wanted to get married in the state where they lived. When that right was explicitly written out of Oklahoma's constitution, they did something about it. They filed suit.

The Lawsuit That Started in 2004

The case was originally filed in the Northern District of Oklahoma in Tulsa as Bishop v. Oklahoma, later retitled Bishop v. United States ex rel. Holder when the federal Defense of Marriage Act became part of what was being challenged. It was one of the first federal lawsuits challenging a state same-sex marriage ban filed after Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.

The case moved slowly, as federal civil rights cases do. It was stayed. It was appealed on procedural grounds. For years it sat in legal limbo while the broader national debate over marriage equality played out in courts, state legislatures, and ballot initiatives across the country. But it never went away.

Their attorney, Don Holladay of Oklahoma City, worked the case for nearly a decade.

Judge Kern's 2014 Ruling

On January 14, 2014 — ten years after the lawsuit was filed — U.S. District Judge Terence Kern issued a 68-page ruling finding Oklahoma's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.

Kern, a Clinton appointee, wrote that the Oklahoma amendment "was based on moral disapproval of homosexuals and their intimate relationships" and was therefore "an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit." He found it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

It was a sweeping ruling from a federal judge in the reddest of red states. It made national news. It was immediately stayed pending appeal, which meant same-sex couples couldn't actually marry in Oklahoma yet, but the legal wall had cracked.

The 10th Circuit and the Road to the Supreme Court

The state of Oklahoma appealed. In July 2014, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Kern's ruling in Bishop v. Smith, finding Oklahoma's ban unconstitutional by a 2-1 vote. The dissenting judge would have ruled the other way — which tells you how close these decisions were and how much individual judicial appointments mattered.

The 10th Circuit stay remained in place while the Supreme Court considered whether to take up the case. On October 6, 2014, the Supreme Court declined to hear appeals from Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, Indiana, and Wisconsin — effectively allowing the lower court pro-equality rulings to stand. Same-sex marriages began in Oklahoma that same day.

Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin, who had been together for years and had fought in court for a decade, were among the first couples to marry in Oklahoma.

The Timeline

Obergefell and What It Meant for Oklahoma

On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court issued its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, establishing a nationwide constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion. It was 5-4.

Oklahoma's ban had already fallen eight months earlier, so in a legal sense, Obergefell didn't change the immediate situation for same-sex couples in the state. But it locked the right in permanently against future legislative reversal, and it put the whole country — including states whose bans were still standing — on the same footing.

The legal groundwork that Bishop, Baldwin, and their attorneys laid in Tulsa was part of the nationwide body of federal case law that made Kennedy's opinion possible. The Tenth Circuit's ruling in their case was one of the precedents in the stack.

What Their Fight Left Behind

The larger Obergefell plaintiffs — Jim Obergefell from Ohio, whose case involved a dying spouse and a marriage license that Ohio refused to recognize — got the documentary. The book. The film. His name is on the decision.

Mary Bishop and Sharon Baldwin are not famous. Their names don't come up in national recaps of the marriage equality movement, even though their case preceded most of the ones that do. They were just a Tulsa couple who spent a decade in federal court because they wanted to be recognized by the state where they lived.

That's worth remembering. Local history has a way of disappearing into the larger national story, and the LGBTQ+ movement in Oklahoma has real people in it — real Tulsans who did real work before the climate made it fashionable or safe to do so. Bishop and Baldwin are part of that record.

If you're looking for other pieces of Tulsa's LGBTQ+ history, Oklahomans for Equality at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center (621 E 4th St) maintains historical records and programming that connects the present LGBTQ+ community to the people who built it. It's worth a visit.

See what's happening in LGBTQ+ Tulsa this week: Check the weekly events guide.