Rockway Institute Fellow Testifies to California Legislature

For Immediate Release 
Media Contact: Rick Moore
(415) 314-8952
rmoore.rockway@alliant.edu 
 
Sacramento, California, April 10, 2007 -- Dr. Kate O’Hanlan, a cancer surgeon in private practice in the Bay Area, California and a fellow of the Rockway Institute National Advisory Board, testified today before the Judiciary Committee of the California Assembly in support of gender-neutral civil marriage. The committee is considering Assembly Bill 43, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Protection Act, authored by Mark Leno (San Francisco), John Laird (Santa Cruz) and Sally Leiber (Mountain View).

 O’Hanlan is a gynecologic surgeon and former associate Director of Gynecologic Cancer Surgery at Stanford University. An expert on health issues facing lesbians and gay men, Dr. O’Hanlan was president of the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association and wrote the group’s report “Homophobia as a Health Hazard.” She has been active in urging professional organizations to confront discrimination in medicine against lesbians and gay men.
 Her testimony recommended that legislators look to guidance from “America’s premier national medical and scientific authorities” when reviewing laws that impact “family, child, community mental and school health.” She noted that the American Psychiatric Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists in California and the American Psychological Association have each “reviewed the research and issued policy statements endorsing equal access to civil marriage.”

 “Research tells us that it is always damaging to experience differential treatment by the laws of your state, conveying that this state holds you, your child, your parents in lower regard than the rest; branding you for social victimization, isolation, depression, and increased suicidality,” O’Hanlan told lawmakers.

 “Medical science is unambiguous and unanimous in endorsing absolute equality of homosexuals, including marriage equality, for the betterment and health of all Americans,” she testified.

 AB 43 would provide that marriage is a personal relation arising out of a civil contract between two persons rather than between a man and a woman. It would change other California state laws to conform with the new bill’s definition of marriage.
 
Dr. O’Hanlan can be reached through her office practice, 650-851-6669 or ohanlan@aol.com.