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Lon And Jim: Together 34 Years, Separated By Family And The Law. An Update.

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The New Civil Rights Movement first ran the story of Lon Watts and Jim Heath in April. Jim, Lon’s partner and love of 34 years, was put into a nursing home by his sister, who also sold their home and is refusing to allow Lon to visit or contact Jim.

Last Saturday, July 6, we published an update, “The Story Of Lon And Jim: Torn Apart After 34 Years By The Hidden Evils Of Marriage Inequality.” That story drew tremendous support for Lon and Jim, with New Civil Rights Movement readers responding with an amazing show of support, concern, and solidarity, generously donating almost $12,000 to help Lon pay for court fees and expenses. Today, another update.

A couple in Texas who read Lon and Jim’s story on these pages were driven to take action, and got in touch with Lon. They want to be anonymous for this update, because they, too, live in constant fear that their family could be torn apart by anti-marriage-equality laws. So for this update, I’ll refer to them as ‘P.’ and ‘D.’

P. and D. have one child, and are in the process of adopting a second. They are a stable, responsible couple with a strong and loving relationship. They have not spent a night apart in over 10 years. Lon and Jim’s story resonated profoundly with them, because they know what it’s like to live with the knowledge that their children could be taken away – their lives destroyed – without the protection of a state sanctioned, legal marriage.

As I’ve covered this story, I’ve gotten to know Lon Watts, and I’ve been amazed every day by his strength. Knowing how hard things have been for Lon, I’ve wished that I lived closer to him and could give more concrete help than I can from the relatively enlightened San Francisco Bay Area. So, when Lon contacted me to tell me that P. and D. had visited Jim in the nursing home on Lon’s behalf, I was eager to talk to them to find out how Jim was, and what they’d seen and heard.

P. and D. drove on Monday from their Texas home to Pittsburg, a small Texas town with a population of less than 5000 people. When they pulled up to the Pittsburg Nursing Center, they decided to go in one at a time – a wise idea, since the sudden appearance of a gay couple, asking to visit a man in the middle of a fairly notorious case involving marriage equality, might tip off the staff.

P. asked to see Jim Heath, and was taken to Jim’s room by a nurse. He didn’t know what to expect, but he found Jim lucid, alert, and oriented. P. explained who he was, and why he was there.

Jim immediately asked about Lon, wanting to know where he was, how he was, and when Lon would be coming to get him and take him home. When P. told Jim the name of the Texas town where he lives with his partner and child, Jim remembered the town well, asking after details like this year’s festivals, though it had been decades since he’d spent a significant amount of time there.

skitched-1548Physically, Jim Heath looked well, but his hair was shaggy. His nails were long, and that handsome mustache – the one that had reminded Lon for 34 years of Tom Selleck’s – had been completely shaved off. P. took a couple of quick pictures. One of them shows Jim looking directly into the camera lens, his eyes alert and focused. He looks like he’s asking a question, or listening intently. Behind him, on the bed, is a cheap-looking institutional pillow, without a cover.

According to P., the nursing home took away Jim’s TV and phone. This worries Lon, of course. “Jim LOVES his cooking shows,” Lon tells me. “And what else is there to do in that place? Why did they have to take his TV away, as well as his phone?” Mostly, though, Lon was thrilled to hear about, and see pictures of, his beloved Jim, looking well and asking to see Lon.

However, what P. says happened next was unpleasant. After P. had been in Jim’s room for 15 minutes, one of the nurses came in and told him she had called Carolyn Heath- – Jim’s sister — and told her Jim was being visited. If P. didn’t leave immediately, the police would be called, and P. and D. would be thrown of the property.

According to federal nursing home regulations, patients have the right to see visitors in private, when they want to, for as long as they wish. Patients also have the right to private phone calls as often as they wish. Of course, nursing home patients who have a legal guardian are to some extent at the mercy of that person — in this case, Jim’s sister Carolyn, who won legal guardianship recently despite Lon and Jim having made up Power of Attorney documents drawn up naming each other as guardian.

If a guardian even has the right to deny a patient visits and phone calls, my research tells me that those decisions must be made with Jim’s best interests in mind. I can’t imagine how it is in Jim’s best interest to be denied visitors, to be denied phone calls, and most importantly, to be denied any contact with the one person most familiar and important to him — his life partner and soul mate, Lon Watts.

P. told me that when he heard the police were going to be called to toss him out, he left. That’s completely understandable. P. and D. can not afford to draw legal attention to themselves — they risked it just by visiting Jim, but the possibility of being exposed further by police presence isn’t something they could allow. They have a gorgeous, happy little son, and another child on the way. Reluctantly, they drove home.

I have learned a lot writing this story. For one thing, I have learned to be even more grateful that I was born and have lived most of my life in the San Francisco Bay Area. Prop 8 aside (three cheers for its recent defeat), I have learned that I’m incredibly lucky to live in a place where being gay is relatively accepted. Being Lon’s friend, and talking to P. and D., has made me even more aware of the privileges I take for granted.

Most of all, I have learned how terrifying it can be to be a gay couple in a state like Texas. Lon has lived through hell, losing the love of his life; his home; having his finances destroyed and his reputation attacked. P. and D., because they can not legally marry each other, live every day knowing that the most precious thing in their lives — their family — is terribly vulnerable. If one person — perhaps even a relative — were motivated enough by greed and/or prejudice, P. and D. could lose their children.

“We have to watch what we say and what we do as, we have to be so careful with having two adopted children in our lives,” P. told me. “I can just see someone turning us in, saying we are bad parents or we don’t take care of our children or whatever else they can dream up.”

There are things I can’t write about right now, for legal reasons, but Lon has repeatedly asked me to thank you all on his and Jim’s behalf. He is blown away by the help and love he’s received. He has new pictures of Jim, and hopeful news about his mental state and health.

It’s easy to focus on the bad in this story; to be overwhelmed by the outrageous injustice of marriage inequality. But, as cruel as some people and laws and institutions can be, it’s amazing to see the countering forces: grace, kindness, empathy, humanity. These have been displayed in humbling abundance by NCRM readers, by supporters of Lon and Jim, and by two men in Texas who risked so much to help them.

Lon has a GoFundMe page, and he is very grateful for any amount people are willing to donate.

In April The New Civil Rights Movement was the first news organization to report on the story of Lon Watts and Jim Heath, after their story appeared on the Gay Marriage USA Facebook page. You can read our original story: “TX Man: After 34 Years My Partner’s Sister Forced Us Apart, Took Our Home Because We Weren’t Married.”

 

skitched-20130706-103052Sarah Laidlaw Beach is an artist and writer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a straight ally who works as a graphic designer, and lives with her partner and dog.

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OPINION

Noem Defends Shooting Her 14-Month Old Puppy to Death, Brags She Has Media ‘Gasping’

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April 26, 2024

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Republican Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota, a top potential Trump vice presidential running mate pick, revealed in a forthcoming book she “hated” her 14-month old puppy and shot it to death. Massive online outrage ensued, including accusations of “animal cruelty” and “cold-blooded murder,” but the pro-life former member of Congress is defending her actions and bragging she had the media “gasping.”

“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” Noem writes in her soon-to-be released book, according to The Guardian which reports “the dog, a female, had an ‘aggressive personality’ and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.”

“By taking Cricket on a pheasant hunt with older dogs, Noem says, she hoped to calm the young dog down and begin to teach her how to behave. Unfortunately, Cricket ruined the hunt, going ‘out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life’.”

“Then, on the way home after the hunt, as Noem stopped to talk to a local family, Cricket escaped Noem’s truck and attacked the family’s chickens, ‘grabb[ing] one chicken at a time, crunching it to death with one bite, then dropping it to attack another’.”

READ MORE: President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

“Cricket the untrainable dog, Noem writes, behaved like ‘a trained assassin’.”

Except Cricket wasn’t trained. Online several people with experience training dogs have said Noem did everything wrong.

“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, calling the young girl pup “untrainable,” “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with,” and “less than worthless … as a hunting dog.”

“At that moment,” Noem wrote, “I realized I had to put her down.”

“It was not a pleasant job,” she added, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”

The Guardian reports Noem went on that day to slaughter a goat that “smelled ‘disgusting, musky, rancid’ and ‘loved to chase’ Noem’s children, knocking them down and ruining their clothes.”

She dragged both animals separately into a gravel pit and shot them one at a time. The puppy died after one shell, but the goat took two.

On social media Noem expressed no regret, no sadness, no empathy for the animals others say did not need to die, and certainly did not need to die so cruelly.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

But she did use the opportunity to promote her book.

Attorney and legal analyst Jeffrey Evan Gold says Governor Noem’s actions might have violated state law.

“You slaughtered a 14-month-old puppy because it wasn’t good at the ‘job’ you chose for it?” he asked. “SD § 40-1-2.3. ‘No person owning or responsible for the care of an animal may neglect, abandon, or mistreat the animal.'”

The Democratic National Committee released a statement saying, “Kristi Noem’s extreme record goes beyond bizarre rants about killing her pets – she also previously said a 10-year-old rape victim should be forced to carry out her pregnancy, does not support exceptions for rape or incest, and has threatened to throw pharmacists in jail for providing medication abortions.”

Former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, now a co-host on “The View” wrote, “There are countless organizations that re-home dogs from owners who are incapable of properly training and caring for them.”

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson blasted the South Dakota governor.

“Kristi Noem is trash,” he began. “Decades with hunting- and bird-dogs, and the number I’ve killed because they were chicken-sharp or had too much prey drive is ZERO. Puppies need slow exposure to birds, and bird-scent.”

“She killed a puppy because she was lazy at training bird dogs, not because it was a bad dog,” he added. “Not every dog is for the field, but 99.9% of them are trainable or re-homeable. We have one now who was never going in the field, but I didn’t kill her. She’s sleeping on the couch. You down old dogs, hurt dogs, and sick dogs humanely, not by shooting them and tossing them in a gravel pit. Unsporting and deliberately cruel…but she wrote this to prove the cruelty is the point.”

Melissa Jo Peltier, a writer and producer of the “Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan” series, also heaped strong criticism on Noem.

“After 10+ years working with Cesar Millan & other highly specialized trainers, I believe NO dog should be put down just because they can’t or won’t do what we decide WE want them to,” Peltier said in a lengthy statement. “Dogs MUST be who they are. Sadly, that’s often who WE teach them to be. And our species is a hot mess. I would have happily taken Kristi Noem’s puppy & rehomed it. What she did is animal cruelty & cold blooded murder in my book.”

READ MORE: ‘Blood on Your Hands’: Tennessee Republicans OK Arming Teachers After Deadly School Shooting

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OPINION

President Hands Howard Stern Live Interview After NY Times Melts Down Over Biden Brush-Off

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8 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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President Joe Biden gave an nearly-unannounced, last-minute, live exclusive interview Friday morning to Howard Stern, the SiriusXM radio host who for decades, from the mid-1990s to about 2015, was a top Trump friend, fan, and aficionado. But the impetus behind the President’s move appears to be a rare and unsigned statement from the The New York Times Company, defending the “paper of record” after months of anger from the public over what some say is its biased negative coverage of the Biden presidency and, especially, a Thursday report by Politico claiming Times Publisher A.G. Sulzberger is furious the President has refused to give the “Grey Lady” an in-person  interview.

“The Times’ desire for a sit-down interview with Biden by the newspaper’s White House team is no secret around the West Wing or within the D.C. bureau,” Politico reported. “Getting the president on the record with the paper of record is a top priority for publisher A.G. Sulzberger. So much so that last May, when Vice President Kamala Harris arrived at the newspaper’s midtown headquarters for an off-the-record meeting with around 40 Times journalists, Sulzberger devoted several minutes to asking her why Biden was still refusing to grant the paper — or any major newspaper — an interview.”

“In Sulzberger’s view,” Politico explained, “only an interview with a paper like the Times can verify that the 81-year-old Biden is still fit to hold the presidency.”

But it was this statement that made Politico’s scoop go viral.

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

“’All these Biden people think that the problem is Peter Baker or whatever reporter they’re mad at that day,’ one Times journalist said. ‘It’s A.G. He’s the one who is pissed [that] Biden hasn’t done any interviews and quietly encourages all the tough reporting on his age.'”

Popular Information founder Judd Legum in March documented The New York Times’ (and other top papers’) obsession with Biden’s age after the Hur Report.

Thursday evening the Times put out a “scorching” statement, as Politico later reported, not on the newspaper’s website but on the company’s corporate website, not addressing the Politico piece directly but calling it “troubling” that President Biden “has so actively and effectively avoided questions from independent journalists during his term.”

Media watchers and critics pushed back on the Times’ statement.

READ MORE: ‘To Do God Knows What’: Local Elections Official Reads Lara Trump the Riot Act

“NYT issues an unprecedented statement slamming Biden for ‘actively and effectively avoid[ing] questions from independent journalists during his term’ and claiming it’s their ‘independence’ that Biden dislikes, when it’s actually that they’re dying to trip him up,” wrote media critic Dan Froomkin, editor of Press Watch.

Froomkin also pointed to a 2017 report from Poynter, a top journalism site published by The Poynter Institute, that pointed out the poor job the Times did of interviewing then-President Trump.

Others, including former Biden Deputy Secretary of State Brian McKeon, debunked the Times’ claim President Biden hasn’t given interviews to independent journalists by pointing to Biden’s interviews with CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and a 20-minute sit-down interview with veteran journalist John Harwood for ProPublica.

Former Chicago Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob, now a media critic who publishes Stop the Presses, offered a more colorful take of Biden’s decision to go on Howard Stern.

The Times itself just last month reported on a “wide-ranging interview” President Biden gave to The New Yorker.

Watch the video and read the social media posts above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Doesn’t Care if Pregnant Women Live or Die’: Alito Slammed Over Emergency Abortion Remarks

 

 

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CNN Smacks Down Trump Rant Courthouse So ‘Heavily Guarded’ MAGA Cannot Attend His Trial

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10 hours ago

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April 26, 2024

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Donald Trump’s Friday morning claim Manhattan’s Criminal Courts Building is “heavily guarded” so his supporters cannot attend his trial was torched by a top CNN anchor. The ex-president, facing 34 felony charges in New York, had been urging his followers to show up and protest on the courthouse steps, but few have.

“I’m at the heavily guarded Courthouse. Security is that of Fort Knox, all so that MAGA will not be able to attend this trial, presided over by a highly conflicted pawn of the Democrat Party. It is a sight to behold! Getting ready to do my Courthouse presser. Two minutes!” Trump wrote Friday morning on his Truth Social account.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins supplied a different view.

“Again, the courthouse is open the public. The park outside, where a handful of his supporters have gathered on trials days, is easily accessible,” she wrote minutes after his post.

READ MORE: ‘Assassination of Political Rivals as an Official Act’: AOC Warns Take Trump ‘Seriously’

Trump has tried to rile up his followers to come out and make a strong showing.

On Monday Trump urged his supporters to “rally behind MAGA” and “go out and peacefully protest” at courthouses across the country, while complaining that “people who truly LOVE our Country, and want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, are not allowed to ‘Peacefully Protest,’ and are rudely and systematically shut down and ushered off to far away ‘holding areas,’ essentially denying them their Constitutional Rights.”

On Wednesday Trump claimed, “The Courthouse area in Lower Manhattan is in a COMPLETE LOCKDOWN mode, not for reasons of safety, but because they don’t want any of the thousands of MAGA supporters to be present. If they did the same thing at Columbia, and other locations, there would be no problem with the protesters!”

After detailing several of his false claims about security measures prohibiting his followers from being able to show their support and protest, CNN published a fact-check on Wednesday:

“Trump’s claims are all false. The police have not turned away ‘thousands of people’ from the courthouse during his trial; only a handful of Trump supporters have shown up to demonstrate near the building,” CNN reported.

“And while there are various security measures in place in the area, including some street closures enforced by police officers and barricades, it’s not true that ‘for blocks you can’t get near this courthouse.’ In reality, the designated protest zone for the trial is at a park directly across the street from the courthouse – and, in addition, people are permitted to drive right up to the front of the courthouse and walk into the building, which remains open to the public. If people show up early enough in the morning, they can even get into the trial courtroom itself or the overflow room that shows near-live video of the proceedings.”

READ MORE: Justices’ Views on Trump Immunity Stun Experts: ‘Watching the Constitution Be Rewritten’

 

 

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