Julie Williams and her daughters had enjoyed a casual lunch and were strolling along a historic street in the St. Louis area when she heard a startling comment.

"You need ISIS," a street preacher called out to her.

She had heard the group of three young men spewing slurs against homosexuals when they had passed by them. It was ugly stuff, but she figured it was their prerogative and kept walking.

But when one of them invoked ISIS, it stopped her cold.

Not today. It was less than three days since the mass shooting in a gay club in Orlando killed 49 people. Not here. This was a diverse and welcoming street -- a popular tourist attraction that always felt safe to her transgender daughter, Alice.

She told her daughters to keep walking and wait for her further down the street. They moved further ahead, but not as far as she would have liked.

"Excuse me? What did you say?" Williams asked the man on the street, who had been recording the two preachers next to him with a cellphone. "Are you referring to the Islamic State?"

"You will be blown off the face of the Earth," she says he told her.

He and the two other men with him kept referring to the Bible, citing passages from Leviticus. Williams, 52, of Creve Coeur, Missouri, asked them if they were affiliated with the terrorist group, which they denied. But they seemed to share some common ideology, and the harassment terrified her.

The men didn't appear to fit the stereotype of potential terrorists in America.

"I had no sense that they were foreign-born. No real sense that they were Muslims, because they were citing the Bible," Williams said. "They had so much hate, they were finding validation in a religious sort of teaching."

She called 911. The local police showed up; Williams gave a statement and filed a report.

Capt. Larry Hampton with the University City (Missouri) Police Department said the group is well-known in the neighborhood. They have been showing up every week for years to speak on street corners.

"This is a group that calls themselves a religion. They were just reading off a paper they call 'Scriptures,'" he said. "I don't think she was targeted."

Williams wonders if the men were tipped off to Alice's transgender status because Alice, 20, is over 6 feet tall. She doesn't know for sure what provoked their hateful commentary.

Hampton said the department enforces local ordinances against trespassing, street blockages or peace disturbances, but this group was within its rights to speak its views.

"The freedom of speech does apply to everyone," he said, adding that the department would share the information with the federal authorities. He does not believe the men have any connection to ISIS, and none of them has a felony record.

The incident shook Williams, who volunteers at St. Louis' Holocaust Museum. She contacted the Anti-Defamation League, which advised her to report the incident to the FBI. She realized that the men who called her an abomination and said her family should be "blown off the face of the earth" could legally purchase an assault weapon in Missouri. That thought scares her.

"It was not just upsetting to me and my children, but an issue of public safety," she said.

When Alice transitioned a few years ago, her family became her posse. They didn't let her go into public alone because they feared for her safety.

Her daughter had never faced any overt discrimination before, Julie said.

The incident raises questions about when free speech crosses the line into punishable hate speech. It illustrates the potential lure of ISIS by those who may only share an extremist ideology across so-called religious or ethnic backgrounds. It suggests the ability of hatemongers to exert greater intimidation or power by invoking the horror of ISIS.

For Williams, it made the debate about better gun regulations feel even more personal.

Most of us would back off a confrontation with a stranger acting like an unhinged extremist -- especially in a state with some of the loosest gun laws in the country. It's just too risky.

Their mother's actions made an impression on her daughters.

"Even now, I think about how brave she was," Alice said. "Her strong sense of justice was amazing."

Her mother admitted that she was scared, and said she would have ignored the hecklers if they had simply insulted her.

"I felt like they were threatening my child, and I wasn't going to stand for it," she said. "I didn't use to be brave until I had these kids."

Quintton Williams, 25, was running out things to do with his 3-year-old son. He didn't have a lot of money to spend on activities.

A friend had told him about a new young fathers' support group that met weekly, and encouraged him to go. Williams, who lives in St. Louis, decided to check it out.

Duane Gill, 41, facilitates the group, which was launched by the nonprofit Parents as Teachers (PAT) earlier this year. He follows a curriculum that focuses on child development, effective discipline and parenting apart from a child's mother. Gill also shares information about free activities around town, and provides pizza and chicken wings.

The camaraderie has turned out to be a bigger draw than the free food.

There's a group of about 20 teens and young men meeting weekly, all with the desire to become better fathers.

"I love being my son's role model," Williams said. He likes showing him new things and playing sports with him. His biggest challenge, he said, is the cost of providing for a child.

"Being a parent is expensive," he said. Williams works as a safety officer and plans to begin training at the St. Louis County Police Academy by the end of the month. He's been attending the fatherhood meeting regularly for the past couple of months, and says he's learned how to improve the relationship and communication with his son's mother, with whom he shares custody.

"We want to keep a positive relationship for the sake of our son," he said.

A portion of the meeting time is set aside to discuss what Gill calls "baby-mama drama." It first came up when one of the young fathers raised the question of how to deal with his daughter's mother's new boyfriend. "What if he wants to discipline my daughter?" the father asked. That discussion lasted for an hour and a half.

There are obstacles that arise when fathers are trying to co-parent a child while living apart from the mother, Gill said. The peer support offers a chance to vent about problems and brainstorm solutions.

"There is group wisdom being shared," Gill said. "I learn a lot from them, too."

Another frequent topic of discussion addresses how to best discipline children. Gill said he wants young fathers to consider ways other than spanking to correct a child's behavior.

"You don't always have to be physical with your child," he said.

One out of every 15 American males will father a child while in his teens. The situation can be overwhelming, but help and resources are out there. Kristen Mandrell, a project manager with PAT, says the nonprofit's entire Fatherhood Toolkit is offered for free on the website parentsasteachers.org under the Resources tab.

The parenting sessions target areas with high rates of infant mortality and teen pregnancy, with the goal of reducing both. PAT wants to help teen parents, male and female, improve their parenting skills and learn about the developmental needs of infants and young children. The group sponsors three young fatherhood groups and four teen motherhood groups per week in the St. Louis area, along with several more across the country.

There's a ripple effect to educating young fathers: Their children do better, across every measure of well-being, than their peers in father-absent homes.

Williams knows the importance of his role. His own father has been married to his mother for 28 years, and has always maintained a strong relationship with him.

He speaks passionately about his hopes for his son.

"My dream for him is to be the best little man he can be," Williams said. "I want him to be better than me. I don't want him to have a child as young as I did. I want him to go to college, be able to leave St. Louis and travel the world."

The fact that he's putting in the work to become a more informed father will bring those dreams closer to reality.

When the family court judge decided how often Griffan Reutzel would see his 3-year-old daughter after his divorce, Reutzel felt punched in the gut.

"What just happened?" he thought. "It was surreal."

Reutzel, 35, had expected to share parenting 50/50 with his ex-wife after their 2014 divorce. Instead, he got a visitation schedule of one day during the week, every other weekend and every other week in the summer. He said he had been involved with his daughter's life since birth. Now, it felt like his daughter had been taken away from him.

"At the end of the day, (others) don't know how bad that feels," he said.

He didn't have the tens of thousands it could cost for an appeal, which he may not have won, anyway. Reutzel, who works at FGR Mechanical and Liberty Teeth Armory in southeast Missouri, says he felt depressed and discouraged. His mother, Linda Reutzel, decided to investigate why the court seemed to favor the mother in the case. She says she discovered a system of institutionalized gender bias that led her to take on the family court system through the state legislature.

Linda Reutzel, who lives in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, began driving to state capital Jefferson City every week to meet with lawmakers. She connected with the National Parents Organization (NPO), an advocacy group fighting for family court reforms such as shared parenting legislation. They armed her with research suggesting that children fare better, emotionally and behaviorally, when they spend more than a third of their time with each parent.

Ned Holstein, founder and chairman of NPO, says the standard custody agreement is out of touch with how families have changed. Increasingly, both parents work in the paid labor force. Fathers today are more involved in daily child care than previous generations. In the past legislative session, about 20 states considered some form of shared parenting legislation, Holstein said. The issue is picking up steam in the media and state houses.

In Missouri, the Reutzels helped get a bill passed by the House and Senate, which is awaiting the governor's signature. The bill creates guidelines for parenting plans that "maximize to the highest degree the amount of time the child may spend with each parent." It requires courts to disclose why shared parenting wasn't awarded and provide written findings and conclusions in custody cases. It also prohibits courts from establishing their own rules, such as having a default parenting plan.

In other states, bar associations have objected to bills that may have put victims of domestic violence at risk or limited judicial discretion. The Missouri Bar Association is not taking a position on this bill, which does not apply in cases of domestic violence or abuse.

One legislator questioned Reutzel about whether children would feel the stability of a "home" if they were constantly shuttling between residences. Others have criticized these types of legislative measures as a way for men to avoid paying as much child support. Would a new standard shift the focus away from the best interest of the child to the best interests of the parents?

Holstein counters that shared parenting is in the best interest of the child. Research shows that fathers pay more child support, and more willingly, when they have more access to their children. He fears that lawyers who benefit financially from drawn-out, expensive custody battles are the ones who oppose changing the system.

"The fact of the matter is that most fathers desperately miss their kids" after a divorce, he said.

Linda Reutzel is more blunt in her criticism. All her son wanted was more time with his child, she said. The custody arrangement reduced him from a parent to a visitor.

"Men and women are obviously different," her son said. "But the feelings for a child are as deep on both sides."

It makes sense for the courts to consider that.