February 12, 1999

For Gay Academics, Benefits for Partners Have a Financial and Emotional Impact

Professors value the money they save and the validation their relationships receive

By ROBIN WILSON

Even after her breast cancer had spread to her liver, Sally Ann Armstrong kept working as a legal secretary because she needed health insurance and couldn't get it through her partner, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles. It was 1995, and U.C.L.A. did not yet offer medical benefits to the partners of gay employees.

In 1998, two years after Ms. Armstrong died of the cancer, which had spread to her brain, the University of California system created a