Tuesday, November 11, 2008

WHAT'S REALLY BEHIND PROP 8

Max Blumenthal of The Daily Beast wrote on 11/4/08 on Proposition 8 in California.
"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.”"

I fail to see how we would lose the institution of marriage if people will stop defining it as one man married to one woman without considering gay men married to one woman, or Lesbian women married to one man. The hypocrisy should not go unnoticed.

Blumenthan goes on to write: "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 cause so far. Blumenthal continues with: 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."......."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."

Our country was founded by people fleeing Their home and country to America, to find religious freedom. Are we to sit quietly by while the Mormon Church and wealthy people defile the concept of freedom of religious choice and inject religious beliefs into our Constitution? Why are we not focusing on halting the action of the religious terrorists within our midst? Read the entirety of Max Blumenthal's article. If the CIA would stop listening into porn phone calls and start investigating the overthrow of all our foundational beliefs, we might become a safer and more effective nation again.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dahling - I am so glad I just ran into your so interesting blog because not long ago I had run into a Google article titled "Dangerous Radicals of the Religious Right." It quotes some folks of the past who had the exact same mindsets that Howard and Roberta Ahmanson have, and I just knew that you would enjoy my taking out time to share all this with you. Maybe you can think up something appropriate to say about those dangerous people in that article, some of whom were actually known to have advocated harsh laws against gays including castration and even execution!
Cynthia

Yiayia said...

Thanks for thinking my blog is interesting, though I sensed it was not made from agreemen. There are many injustices that I wish more people would speak out about. It is religious people who are against Gays. When they can be convinced that being Gay is not a choice of
Gays but of the God the religious people claim is theirs.

The article to which you referred me is of interest in that none of the quotes is from within a Century of today. While I respect these men for their creative thinking of their century, I believe that much in religious edicts belongs in a past, significantly more igrnorant, era.