Who is funding California's Prop 8, the country's most controversial ballot measure? The Mormons' donations are well known, and are a source of outrage among the church's more moderate elements. But little attention has been focused on two of the proposition's biggest individual donors: Elsa Broekhuizen, the mother of Blackwater founder Erik Prince, and Howard F. Ahmanson Jr., the reclusive theocratic millionaire who inherited $300 million from his philanthropist father at age 18.
When I profiled Ahmanson in a 2004 article for Salon.com, I became the first journalist in 20 years to interview him. Yesterday I resurrected my reporting for The Daily Beast, updating it to cover Ahmanson's recent machinations, particularly his role in Prop 8. As I wrote, Ahmanson few Americans have heard of Ahmanson -- and that's the way he likes it. His extreme politics and eccentric personality reveal the draconian underside of a ballot measure billed by its proponents as "pro-family."
During a 1985 interview with the Orange County Register, Ahmanson summarized his political agenda: "My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives."
Though Ahmanson's rhetoric has softened over the years, his politics are derived from the radical Christian Reconstructionist theology of R.J. Rushdoony, a far-right theologian who advocated replacing the US Constitution with biblical law. "God's government prevails," Rushdoony wrote, "and His alternatives are clear-cut: either men and nations obey His laws, or God invokes the death penalty against them." Those eligible on Rushdoony's long list for execution included disobedient children, unchaste women, apostates, blasphemers, practitioners of witchcraft, astrologers, adulterers, and, of course, anyone who engaged in "sodomy or homosexuality."
Rushdoony was the father Ahmanson never had, bringing him to radical right-wing Christianity not long after the anxiety-ridden, Tourette's-afflicted scion of wealth checked out of the Menninger Clinic. Ahmanson bankrolled Rushdoony's religious empire; in return, Rushdoony made Ahmanson a board member of his think tank, Chalcedon, which to this day advocates theocratic revolution in the United States. Ahmanson and his wife were at Rushdoony's bedside when he died in 2001.
(Read the full story on Ahmanson here).
My article is accompanied at the Daily Beast by a new video by Michael Wilson, creator of the brilliant documentary, Silhouette City. Wilson also co-produced my video documentary about Sarah Palin's belief in spiritual warfare, "In The Land Of Queen Esther."
On November 2, Wilson went to San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium to cover "The Call," an 80,000-strong Pentecostal rally for Prop 8. The Call organizer, Lou Engle, gathered his troops together for several days of fasting and prayer to stop what he called the "sexual insanity" of Prop 8 opponents. The rally culminated with Engle imploring his fervent crowd to become martyrs, to be willing to lay down their lives for the cause.
(Click here to see Wilson's video.)
The defeat of Prop 8 would be a nightmare for the Christian right. As Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council said of the ballot measure, "It's more important than the presidential election... We will not survive [as a nation] if we lose the institution of marriage."
But behind the Christian right's panicked pleas for preserving "traditional marriage" lies a more deep-seated fear. California's rejection of Prop 8 would represent a decisive repudiation of the theocratic fantasy outlined by Rushdoony and mainstreamed by Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, Lou Engle and countless evangelical minions. Ahmanson has spent what he could to keep his mentor's dream alive, but the movement's nightmare may arrive nonetheless.
A big homo in Calfornia.
i am not gay, but i am a civilized human being that sees the reality of the churches hold on people (remember these church people are also aligned with the 11,000 cases of child molestation, and geo bushes illegal war granted to him by g*d to murder 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of innocent men women and children??? are you people insane????).
to actually say, or imply, what is stated above: "Only in a democracy can we vote away the rights of others." is a lie and a very dangerous way of forcing people to accept unfair laws.
george bush is a perfect example of using force and lies and manipulation of laws to take away our freedom and he will pay for it after he is thrown out of the white house.
Again, let me state it clearly, this amendment is unconstitutional and the persons responsible for pushing this on us, are liars, and dangerously insane uncivilized humans and should be held up to ridicule as often as possible..
Few things make me more sick than Fundies. And you are trying to hide it, but you are failing to do so.
Most societies collapsed not for lack of "maroles and guidelines" but for failure to adapt to changing conditions due to strict adherence to past ideologies, superstitions and closed minds.
I am glad you have no anger towards gays or lesbians (gays kind of cover both) or its ok for you to use the word "queer" which I am sure you have used before. Clever play on words "I just don't believe their ideals should be espoused" (as in married). Anyway, one step at a time I guess, today Obama, tomorrow who knows, perhaps a complete accepting and open society where no one is governed by the ideals of any one faction of the society.
Oh, by the way, just in case you think I have self interest, I am hetrosexual not that is any big deal.
"How's That Working For You"?
As ALL of these ANTI-LOVE, ANTI-FAMILY amendments and propositions continue to keep LGBT U.S. citizen's legal status as SUB-Americans, don't you feel good as U.S. tax-payers, knowing that your own state and country says your family and children are worthless in the eyes of the law while they take your money? Angry yet? No?! Then keep paying your taxes and acting like everything is OK; keep playing by the rules, even though these "rules" do not even INCLUDE you or your children!
Self-respect and self-esteem...............anyone?
wow, i had no idea just how insidiously evil this was...
one tihng I know ,if calif loses prop 8, we will be back with something else..federal civil unions.
don't know ?but I stay clear from those people (after I let them know how I feel)