Who Is The Mystery Man Behind Prop 8?

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.

Comments

[Horus45]

Here in Arizona we rejected an Ammendment to the Arizona Constitution banning Gay Marriage in 2006.
The idiots who put that Proposition on the ballot in 2006 did not give up and now we have to Reject it again in 2008.
When will these people learn that we don't want to deny rights to anyone?

[ptobe]

"who inherited $300 million from his philanthropist father at age 18."

That's one of the most vulgar, offensive notions I've ever heard.

It's no wonder Ahmanson is so messed up.

[Emmory]

Inheriting money is vulgar and offensive?
What should have happened to his fathers money if not going to his family?

[knowBuddhaU]

Like our bodies, it would've gone back from whence it came.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
out of the Divine
post-partum we stand; divided, we fall back
into the Divine

dp

[lippp]

Well, I believe the Bible says it is easier for a camel to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Funny, how that is ignored by the rich Christians such as Ahmanson, Bush, Cheney and all those who are wealthy and who would prefer to have that page torn out and simply believe it doesn't apply to them. Hypocrites, for sure.

[ptobe]

What is really vulgar and offensive about it is that when the amount of the inheritance is an obscene figure like this one, it invariably ruins the inheritor and the 'fortune' ends up being wasted resources. Of course there are exceptions, but I think they're rare.

All the super-wealthy of the world should take a page from Warren Buffet's book - he passed on enough to give his kids a good start, but they've all gone on to be successful in their own rights. The rest he gives to those who truly need it.

I think Ahmanson could have survived with 50 million of daddy's money and the rest could have been put to good use.

Yes, it IS vulgar and obscene to have so much wealth and to not think of anything better to do with it than to hoarde it and keep it in the family. That's not the Christian way.

[Kassandra]

I bet daddy wouldn't have liked the uses his $$ was being put to by III.................

[PadrePio]

Thank you Max. This type of information is helpful. We can now understand the real intent of this type of ballot measure by knowing who is funding it. I would have liked the no on 8 people to be more aggressive in showing the Mormons and other nuts who backed this bill. I have gay friends who were married in October and I would have supported 8 for that reason alone but when I found out about the Mormons involvement I starting speaking up. I live in the 4th congressional district in California and we are ruled by the Mormon Church. I for one am tired of it and hope prop 8 goes down.

[pjburke]

There is no compatibility between the secular rationalist social order envisioned by the Framers of the Constitution and what these dominionist theocrats would impose. As such, their project is no less than the revolutionary overthrow of the United States of America, and replacement of the current political order with a violently repressive totalitarian theocracy. They need to be confronted on this -- by legislation and law enforcement, if necessary -- in just these exact terms, and called out for what they are: Enemies Within.

[arvay]

You're making an excellent point, one that should be picked up and spread widely.

These people clearly reject the Constitution and other laws of the US, and want to substitute their idea of "God's law."

A nice, neat definition of sedition if there ever was one. Seems like something the FBI should look into, in the same way that they investigated the KKK during the Civil Rights struggle. Maybe the Obama Justice Department can take this up.

[sisterdebmac]

It'll never happen. The looney fringe has too much power. I mean, look, on the campaign trail, running for president of the United States, Mike Huckabee said that HE wanted to replace the Constitution with the Ten Commandments and nobody batted an eye. Oh yeah, that's cool, Mike. While you're at it, why don't you move the Kentucky Creationist Museum to the Mall in Washington, DC? For this, he gets his own talk show on Fox Noise.

[Shrinath]

The day CA elected Arnie, it was a signal. There have been many rumors in the past about Arnie and his behavior. What is scary is that the religious right knocking on the mutli-ethnic, multi-cultural California. The war has to go on. And for all those who believe that Palin will crawl back into the woodwork she just came from? Think. Her ascension was an experiment. To see how the bible thumpers reacted. And they reacted well. She is too precious a tool for the GOP to be cast away. Scary times are ahead.

[knowBuddhaU]

WORD! That's exactly what I'm saying. Wanna know the scariest thing I've thought in a long time?

This is all about the machining of the human psyche.

Physicists deliberately chose the absolutely isolated point particle as their fundamental unit. Psychologists, despite Oppenheimer"s 1955 warning to the APA convention, adopted this as our model of the ego. [SOURCE: Kinget, G. W. (1979). Objective psychology: a case of epistemological sleight-of-hand. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology, 11, 83-96.]

This implodes our psyches into quantum singularities of pain.That"s right, I"m saying we're cosmic pinheads. We are cellf-imprisoned in cellves of our own mistaken making. Defining our selves as essentially imprisoned is at the root of human suffering.

What are the hallmarks of the Bush-APA Torture Doctrine? Isolation and psycho-spiritual attacks. http://psychoanalystsopposewar.org/blog/2007/11/17/leaked-guantanamo-document-confirms-routine-use-of-isolation-as-psychological-torture

Torture by isolation isn't aberrant for us, it"s what we do. Remember the abuses of Islam at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib?

Katherine Harris Was in Sarah Palin's Spiritual Warfare Network
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-wilson/katherine-harris-was-in-s_b_140164.html?show_comment_id=17579666#comment_17579666

[Shrinath]

Religion in itself has been twisted and has been about control. It is an effective tool which has been used for centuries. Akin to organized crime really. Palin, Bush and their ilk are just the foot soldiers. As you put it, programmed to react in a certain way.

It is like processing a certain information without really understanding it. Example, light. It is a particle and a wave. Duality. If I can extend that to what we see from genre of Palin & Co., they believe in their righteousness not understanding that they could be horrendously wrong.

[CintiBlue]

Thank you.

As soon as I looked into Palin, I knew she was the attempt to get as high in the government as possible.

[JohnJames]

Thanks for your wonderful work. More people need to know about the profoundly unAmerican fascistic theocratic leadership that hides behind the smiling sweet talking faces that speak of "family values". They wouldn't return America to some mythical simpler and more "wholesome" time. They would unleash a nightmare society of mayhem and murder in the name of God. Let's pray that the tens of thousands of little donations given by fair-minded people will be enough to defeat Prop. 8. It would be a real slap in the face for these freaks.

[MickDem]

Money talks and talks and talks, no matter how hateful. Let's hope he took a large hit when the market tanked.

[knowBuddhaU]

O brother, my Brother, your reporting never fails to satisfy.

Does that make Ahmanson a dominionist?

I've been studying the psychophysiology of empathically-mediated altruism since the mid 80s. I wanted to understand how our brains are involved in stereotyping and racism. That led me into studying white supremacy, which in turn led me to your colleague, Dave Neiwert. He knew me when I was doing undercover militia group stuff.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/10/hbc-90003772 By Scott Horton "What [Max Blumenthal's] clips reveal is material to understanding Palin"s political and religious views... [T]he Wasilla congregation and Palin follow "dominionism," a conviction that society must be governed exclusively by the law of God as set forth in the Bible.... Dominionists do not embrace the separation of church and state, and tend to approach political issues from a highly dogmatic stance, often focused on particular charismatic individuals they see as ordained to govern. Indeed, dominionists widely embraced George W. Bush as an "anointed" leader whose decisions were beyond debate."

Neiwert has his own blog, called Orcinus. Fellow Huffposters, give him a visit. http://dneiwert.blogspot.com

[Soulsurfer]

Thanks for the info, Max. These people can't come out into the light on their own, and we need real investigative reporting to inform us where these attacks on our rights are coming from. The MSM is MIA.

[knowBuddhaU]

Would t'were that were true, soulsurfer. Some media ares actively aiding and abetting this movement. It's an effort to control us by putting The Fear into us. Fear of god, communists, terrorists; fear of the Other.

Psychology and advertising aka "Public Relations," aka the manufacture of consent, are a terrible twosome. We invented ways of jacking whole nations to hell--or just one voting bloc at a time--and then sticking them with the bill.

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country."
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/3/25/body_of_war_new_doc_tells

Someone is using black psy ops on us.

NAOMI KLEIN: "And so, the Chicago Boys were born. And it was considered a success... [H]undreds and hundreds of Latin American students, on full scholarships, came to the University of Chicago in the 1950s and ‘60s to study here to try to engage in what Juan Gabriel Valdes, Chile"s foreign minister after the dictatorship finally ended, described as a project of deliberate ideological transfer, taking these extreme-right ideas, that were seen as marginal even in the United States, and transplanting them to Latin America. That was his phrase--that is his phrase." http://www.democracynow.org/2008/10/6/naomi_klein

[knowBuddhaU]

D'oh! I forgot to mention RJ Eskow's great summary of the psychophysiology of fear-mongering, and the horrifyingly inhuman to which it is being put in campaign advertising.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/100-million-suspects_b_139689.html

Remember how Palin tried to divide Us, the indivisible? The truth is, there is no Other.

My poetics is all about sharing Being aware of this, our shared Becoming. There isn't the smallest crack or crevice anywhere for the fear-mongers to wedge us apart, if we realize what we truly are: KIN, baby, kin!

We all arise from the very same source. Take a close look at these words right here. What do you see? Only words, no spaces? The spaces in between unite these words, right? Just so with us.

My poetry is an antidote. It incorporates the Bronze Age mythology of Egypt with our real world today. My intention is healing the wounds my beloved science, psychology, has been used to inflict.

O Sister! My Sister

[First voice: Osiris speaks to his beloved Isis; second voice: Luke speaks to his sister, Leia Skywalker; third voice: we all speak with one voice; fourth voice: Being Aware of Becoming.]

My sister is my Goddess;
My sister is my Wife.

My sister is my Princess,
For whom
I bear
ALL STRIFE!

My sister is my
Mother!
Beyond whom

There is no

Other.

In sum, O Sister! my Sister! my Sister is my
L I F E!

dp

[ShinjiIkari]

The Buddha didn't address fear directly, but its complement--desire--is brought about in this world through illusion. It's safe to say that fear can also be brought about by illusion. Once we realize that, the rest is simple: transcend illusory fear as we transcend illusory desire.

Those of us who are Buddhist use the Eightfold Path and showing compassion for all sentient beings without discrimination; the real Christians out there follow the two commandments laid down by Jesus: love God and love each other. Other religions, from the Quakers to the Baha'i, preach universality. Let's live to shame the prophets of fear.