Reply #49: BIBLICAL LAW TRUMPS CIVIL LAW

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Soon, the money came rolling in to the Anglican Council, with more than
$1 million in donations from Ahmanson in 2000 and 2001. And the newly
flush Anglican Council redoubled its anti-gay campaign, climaxing in
November when the Episcopal Church consecrated its first openly gay
bishop, the Rt. Rev. Eugene Robinson. With its war chest full and its
strongest pretext yet for a schism, the group cranked up a smear
campaign against Robinson, falsely accusing him of sexual harassment and
administering a bisexual pornography Web site, prompting three wealthy
dioceses to split with the Episcopal Church and join the Anglican
Council's renegade network. Now more dioceses and parishes are poised to
follow, a prospect that threatens to weaken the progressive Episcopal
Church's political influence -- 44 members of Congress are Episcopalian
-- and provide an important new tableau for right-wing political organizing.

The Episcopal Church split is only a small part of Ahmanson's concerted
efforts to radically transform not only American religion, but the
nation's moral culture and, thereby, the country itself. His money has
made possible some of the most pivotal conservative movements in
America's recent history, including the 1994 GOP takeover of the
California Legislature, a ban on gay marriage and affirmative action in
California, and the mounting nationwide campaign to prove Darwin wrong
about evolution. His financial influence also helped propel the recent
campaign to recall California Gov. Gray Davis. And besides contributing
cash to George W. Bush's 2000 presidential campaign, Ahmanson has played
an important role in driving Bush's domestic agenda by financing the
career of Marvin Olasky, a conservative intellectual whose ideas
inspired the creation of the new White House Office of Faith-Based and
Community Initiatives.

After more than 20 years of politically oriented philanthropy, Ahmanson
is now emerging as one of the major financial angels of the right,
putting him in the company of Richard Mellon Scaife, the oil and banking
heir who bankrolled the groundwork for much of the conservative
movement's apparatus and became a household name in the 1990s thanks to
his $2.4 million dirty-tricks campaign against President Bill Clinton. Yet few Americans have heard of Ahmanson -- and that's the way he likes
it. Unlike Scaife, Ahmanson donates cash either out of his own pocket or
through his unincorporated corporate entity, Fieldstead and Co., to
avoid having to report the names of his grantees to the IRS. His
Tourette's syndrome only adds to his reclusive persona, as his fear of
speaking leads him to shun the media. And while Scaife travels the world
in his own DC-7 jet, Ahmanson shuns luxury for a lifestyle of
down-to-earth humility. As his wife of 17 years, Roberta Green Ahmanson,
told me, he once gave up his seat on an airplane for a refund. And when
he goes out for a spin in his neighborhood in Newport Beach, a posh
coastal community 45 minutes south of Los Angeles, he drives a Prius,
Toyota's new, environment-friendly hybrid car. It's a modest choice for
a man who could afford an entire Hummer dealership, but nevertheless a
considerable upgrade from his old Datsun pickup.

At the root of Ahmanson's quirky asceticism and ardent conservatism is
his rocky path from cloistered rich kid to Bible-believing
philanthropist. Ahmanson's father, Howard Sr., was a savings and loan
tycoon whose net worth was valued at over $300 million at the time of
his death in 1968. Howard Jr. was only 18 at the time he inherited the
fortune. Ejected from his sheltered youth to confront a world suddenly
in his palm, the reluctant heir feared that he would never surpass his
father's accomplishments; at the same time, he viewed his inherited
fortune as a wall separating him from humanity. After wandering the
country and the world searching for peace of mind, he returned home in
the mid-'70s still a lost soul.

It was then that he found his salvation in the church and in R.J.
Rushdoony, a prolific author and an influential theologian of the far
right. Rushdoony is the father of Christian Reconstructionism, a strange
variant of Calvinism that stresses waging political struggle to put the
earth, and in particular the U.S., under the control of biblical law. In
his 30-some books, he advocated everything from the end of
government-administered social welfare and public schools to the
execution of homosexuals. For around 20 years, until Rushdoony's death
in 1995, Ahmanson served on the board of his think tank, Chalcedon,
granting it a total of $1 million. In exchange, Rushdoony acted as
Ahmanson's spiritual advisor, imbuing him with a sense of order and a
mission.
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