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The Man Behind Proposition 8

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  • The Man Behind Proposition 8

    THE MAN BEHIND PROPOSITION 8

    AlterNet
    http://www.alternet.org/blogs/democrac y/106102/the_man_behind_proposition_8/
    Nov 5 2008
    CA

    Among the local ballot measures to be decided on Election
    Day, California's Proposition 8 is perhaps the most fiercely
    contested. Backers of the proposition to ban same-sex marriage in the
    state cast their campaign in apocalyptic terms. "This vote on whether
    we stop the gay-marriage juggernaut in California is Armageddon,"
    born-again Watergate felon and Prison Fellowship Ministries founder
    Chuck Colson told the New York Times. Tony Perkins, the president of
    the Christian right's most powerful Beltway lobbying outfit, Family
    Research Council, echoed Colson's language. "It's more important
    than the presidential election," Perkins said of Prop 8. "We will
    not survive [as a nation] if we lose the institution of marriage."

    The campaign for Prop 8 has reaped massive funding from conservative
    backers across the country. Much of it comes from prominent donors
    like the Utah-based Church of Latter Day Saints and the Catholic
    conservative group, Knights of Columbus. Prop 8 has also received a
    boost from Elsa Broekhuizen, the widow of Michigan-based Christian
    backer Edgard Prince and the mother of Erik Prince, founder of the
    controversial mercenary firm, Blackwater.

    While the Church of Latter Day Saints' public role in Prop 8 has
    engendered a growing backlash from its more liberal members, and
    Broekhuizen's involvement attracted some media attention, the extreme
    politics of Prop 8's third largest private donor, Howard F. Ahmanson,
    reclusive heir to a banking fortune, have passed almost completely
    below the media's radar. Ahmanson has donated $900,000 to the passage
    of Prop 8 so far.

    I first met Ahmanson in 2004, when he and his wife, Roberta, agreed
    to an interview request for an article I was writing for Salon. Their
    exchanges with me marked the first time since 1984 that Howard had
    agreed to make contact with a journalist, and the first time since
    1992 for Roberta. Howard agreed to answer questions only by email
    because, according to Roberta, his Tourette's Syndrome made chatting
    on the phone with a stranger nearly impossible. He functions "like
    a slow modem," she said. Her dual role as her husband's spokesperson
    and nurse quickly became apparent.

    Few Americans have heard of Ahmanson--and that's the way he likes
    it. He donates cash either out of his own pocket or through his
    unincorporated Fieldstead & Co. to avoid having to report the names
    of his grantees to the IRS. His Tourette's syndrome only adds to
    his mysterious persona, as his fear of speaking leads him to shun
    the media. While Ahmanson once resided in a mental institution in
    Kansas, he now occupies a position among the Christian right's power
    pantheon as one of the movement's most influential donors. 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."

    The campaign to teach "intelligent design" in public school classrooms,
    the Republican takeover of the California Assembly, and the rollback of
    affirmative action in California--Ahmanson has been behind them all. He
    has also taken a special interest in anti-gay crusades. Ahmanson's most
    controversial episode related to his funding of the religious empire of
    Rousas John Rushdoony, a radical evangelical theologian who advocated
    placing the United States under the control of a Christian theocracy
    that would mandate the stoning to death of homosexuals. With Prop
    8 organizers claiming in a virtual mantra that their measure will
    not harm gays or take rights away from heterosexual Californians,
    Ahmanson has good reason to conceal his involvement in the campaign.

    When Howard F. Ahmanson Jr. was born in 1950, his father, then 44 years
    old, was feting visiting kings and queens and basking in the opulence
    of his mansion on Harbor Island, an exclusive address in Southern
    California's Newport Harbor. Howard Junior was tended by an army of
    servants and ferried to and from school in a limousine. Watching the
    world glide by through darkened windows, he was gripped with a longing
    to cast off his wealth and disappear into anonymity. He burned with
    resentment toward his father, a remote, towering presence, referred
    to by friends and foes alike as "Emperor Ahmanson." While Ahmanson
    Sr. showered local institutions in the Los Angeles area with charitable
    gifts from the fortune he amassed as the founder of Washington Mutual,
    his son was starved for attention.

    The Emperor's succession plans began to erode when Ahmanson turned
    ten and his beloved mother served his father with divorce papers. She
    died a few years later. When Howard was 18, his father died, too,
    sinking him into depths of despair. With his $300 million inheritance,
    he was now California's--and perhaps America's--richest teenager. But
    he was without direction, afraid and utterly alone. The tics,
    twitches and uncontrollable verbal spasms caused by his Tourette's
    syndrome worsened. He could not cope with his emotions and during
    increasingly stressful episodes he would uncontrollably blurt out
    shocking statements. Unable to look people in the eye when he spoke
    to them, he became socially paralyzed. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, he
    spent two years at the Menninger Clinic, a Topeka, Kansas psychiatric
    institution. "I resented my family background," he told the Register
    in 1985. "[My father] could never be a role model, whether by habits
    or his lifestyle, it was never anything I wanted."

    After graduating from Occidental College with poor marks, Ahmanson
    became drawn to a heavily politicized brand of Christianity that was
    growing popular in evangelical circles. He discovered the writings
    of a radical right-wing theologian whose family was massacred in the
    Armenian genocide, R.J. Rushdoony, Rushdoony's book, The Politics
    of Guilt and Pity, in which the theologian mocked wealthy liberals,
    struck a particular chord with the young Ahmanson. "The guilty rich
    will indulge in philanthropy, and the guilty white men will show 'love'
    and 'concern' for Negroes and other such persons who are in actuality
    repulsive and intolerable to them," Rushdoony wrote. Ahmanson read
    avidly as though Rushdoony were describing his own life.

    While Ahmanson gave no indication he shared Rushdoony's crude racism,
    through the theologian's scathing critique of "the guilty rich" he
    began to release himself from the burden of responsibility to carry on
    his father's legacy. He promptly sold his stock in his father's company
    and invested it in lucrative real estate acquisitions, with a goal of
    earning returns of 20 to 25 percent per year. That assured that his
    wealth would grow quickly, but it also made him vulnerable to people
    who manipulated his residual guilt complex to get a cut of his fortune.

    Rushdoony's political ideas provided Ahmanson with a framework for his
    philanthropic machinations. Describing his philosophy as "Christian
    Reconstructionism," Rushdoony painstakingly outlined plans for the
    church to take over the federal government and "reconstruct" it along
    biblical lines. He provided detailed plans for how it would provide
    healthcare, pave roads and reorganize schools, and how it would mete
    out justice.

    Calling for the literal application of all 613 laws described
    in the Book of Leviticus, Rushdoony paid special attention to
    punishments. Instead of serving prison sentences, criminals would
    be sentenced to indentured servitude, whipped, sold into slavery,
    or executed. "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."

    After Ahmanson's awakening, R.J. Rushdoony reveled in his discovery
    of a financial angel willing to fund the growth of his think tank,
    Chalcedon, while expanding the influence of Reconstructionist
    philosophy. He rewarded Ahmanson's generosity by giving him a seat on
    Chalcedon's board of directors. Ahmanson was profoundly grateful. At
    last, in Rushdoony he had found the attentive and approving father he
    yearned for his whole life. "Howard got to know Rushdoony and Rushdoony
    was very good to him when he was a young man and my husband was very
    grateful and supported him to his death," Roberta Green Ahmanson
    told me. The Ahmansons were at Rushdoony's side when he died in
    February 2001.

    Roberta Ahmanson was not reticent about her and husband's political
    views. When I asked her if they favored biblical law as a governing
    model for the United States, for example, she casually responded,
    "I'm not suggesting we have an amendment to the Constitution that says
    we now follow all 613 of the case laws of the Old Testament... But
    if by biblical law you mean the last seven of the Ten Commandments,
    you know, yeah."

    The year of Rushdoony's death, Ahmanson gave $1 million to the
    Institute for Religion and Democracy, a conservative outfit
    in Washington focused on weakening the political influence of
    historically liberal mainline churches. The IRD immediately placed
    Roberta Ahmanson on its board of directors after receiving her
    husband's donation. Ahmanson's money was budgeted specifically to
    generate a smear campaign against the Episcopal Church's first openly
    gay bishop, Eugene Robinson. The campaign's spearhead came in the
    form of a 2004 column by Weekly Standard editor Fred Barnes titled
    "The Gay Bishop's Links."

    Barnes, who neglected to mention his membership on the IRD's board
    of directors in his column, falsely alleged that the Web site of a
    gay youth group Robinson founded contained links to "a pornographic
    website," and claimed without independent sourcing that Robinson
    "put his hands on" a Vermont man "inappropriately" during a church
    meeting "several years ago." The IRD circulated the column to various
    cable news networks, but only Fox News--which also employs Barnes as
    a regular pundit and host of a talk show--agreed to broadcast it.

    Though a panel of bishops investigating the charges discredited Barnes'
    smear, it helped widen the rift within the Episcopal Church and divide
    it from its global affiliates. In May 2007, 11 ultra-conservative
    congregations from Northern Virginia bolted from the Episcopal
    Church and joined forces with the Anglican Church of Nigeria, led by
    Archbishop Peter Akinola. Akinola, who once called homosexuals "lower
    than beasts," spent much of 2006 lobbying his Nigeria's legislature
    to pass a bill meting out five year prison terms to any gay people
    who dare to gather--or even touch one another--in public.

    While the Episcopal global schism represented a towering achievement
    for Ahmanson, the passage of Prop 8 would be the apotheosis of his
    long career. He does not seek credit--recognition only damages the
    causes he funds. Ahmanson derives satisfaction from transforming a
    nation the same way he transformed himself. "The Christian view of
    man is that we're not perfect," Roberta Ahmanson told me. "You don't
    give to things that base themselves on the optimistic view that human
    beings are going to be doing it right."

    Tagged as: religion, california, documentary, san francisco, 2008
    election, san diego, proposition 8, spiritual warfare, lou engle,
    elsa broekhuizen, howard f. ahmanson

    Max Blumenthal is a Nation Institute Puffin Foundation Writing
    Fellow whose work regularly appears in the Nation. A winner of the
    USC Annenberg Online Journalism Award, he is also a Research Fellow
    at Media Matters for America.
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