APA Newsletters
Spring 2000
Volume 99, Number 2

I am Dr. Joan Callahan, of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, where I teach and do research on ethics and public policy.

Let me begin by explaining my physical appearance today. I am a 51-year-old woman who is quite bald. I have not shaved my head in protest of the measures that have been put before this committee, even though that would be more than appropriate, and I invite some of you to consider it. My bald head is one side effect of chemotherapy. I am one of the 184,000 American women diagnosed with breast cancer this year. I hope I will not be one of the 44,000 American women who will die from breast cancer this year.

I wish that, today, I were putting my (limited) energy into a hearing or committee meeting on how we can learn why this disease has reached epidemic proportions among American women. I wish that, today, this committee were engaged in trying to discern how our real social problems might be defeated—problems such as crushing poverty in this commonwealth; or ensuring that all our people have adequate health care; or ensuring that all our children have completely open futures because they all start out equally well nourished, with equally good schools to receive them, and equally supportive homes to see them through to adulthood.

However, these kinds of concerns are not on our agenda today. Rather, the issue before us is, though as a philosopher I hesitate to say it, a largely philosophical one—namely, the issue of who has and who has not got "family values."

I turn, then, to the issue set for us. And I shall address it under, if you will, two hats. The first is the hat that identifies me in the way I have already told you about. I am employed by the flagship university of this Commonwealth to work with students and to research and write on questions of ethics and public policy. The second hat identifies me in a very different way: as the partner of Jennifer Crossen and coparent of David Crossen, who are here with me before you today.

Let me tip my first hat first. I have made a copy of my curriculum vitae available to the Committee. I respectfully inform you of my credentials. I am one of the virtual handful of women at the University of Kentucky who hold the rank of full professor. I assume that this is sufficient to establish that my academic colleagues and our University administrators believe that I am not only competent to teach and write in my areas of study but that my work is sufficiently outstanding to justify my placement among the University’s highest-ranked teacher-scholars.

What I have to say under my professional hat is brief, and it is this. There simply is no credible secular argument for the claim that intimacy, including physical intimacy, between persons of the same sex is morally wrong. Period. End of story.

Now there are, of course, various religious arguments against homosexual interactions. But my understanding of the United States of America is that no state in this great union should be in the business of establishing religion through its laws.

The simple fact of the matter is that there is a stable minority in all human populations whose orientation is toward establishing their intimate relationships and life partnerships with persons of their same biological sex. This stable minority is just as "natural" in human societies as, say, a relatively stable minority of people who can sing beautifully or who are mathematical geniuses.

In sum, then, there is simply no compelling moral argument for the wrongness of same-sex intimacy and partnerships. If anyone thinks he or she has such an argument, I invite you to lay it out before us for examination.

Let me finish under my other hat—the one I wear as a woman in a life relationship and as a mother. I indicate to you my life partner, Jennifer Crossen. I trust you will agree that she certainly appears to be a wholesome, healthy, and robust woman. I assure you that she is all of these things.

And that is lucky for us. Jennifer is self-employed as a horseback riding instructor in Lexington, and as a self-employed person she must purchase her and David’s health care coverage independently. It would cost us more than three times as much to purchase for Jennifer and David the coverage I could purchase for them through my job if I were a man—a privilege my heterosexual colleagues are given systematically and without a second thought. It is lucky for us that I am facing cancer rather than Jennifer. Had she been the one of us with this disease, getting the treatment for her on her insurance that she could otherwise get on my insurance would completely devastate us financially. We are, then, very lucky that I’m the one who is sick.

I submit to you that I work as hard and as well as an employee of the Commonwealth of Kentucky as any of my heterosexual colleagues. Given this, it is simply not fair that I am provided less in the way of compensation for my work only because my life partner is a woman. Neither can I purchase health care for David through my job. And that is just not fair to David. I came into this child’s life in 1988 when he was a year-and-a-half old. I have fully parented him since then, sharing completely the economic and social responsibilities of a second parent. I am the only second parent he knows—David last saw his biological father when he was three. He no longer remembers him—wouldn’t know him if he sat down beside him at this table today. But David knows me; and he knows me as a parent who has, as long as he can recall, been there and helping through everything from learning to swim, to learning to ride a bike, to learning to read and write, through learning to use power tools.

And I have been there despite the fact that this Commonwealth does not allow me to be recognized as his parent and despite the fact that some of our legislators continue to waste valuable time, energy, and state resources on doing everything that can be done to ensure that I am not able to provide for my family as well as heterosexual citizens are able to provide for their families.

I am Jennifer’s spouse of over nine years now. I know that. And she knows that. And our families and friends know that. I am David’s parent for all of his conscious life. I will always be his other mother. I know that. And David knows that. Yet, some who are here today would have you believe that we do not have family values. Shame on them.