Stoning gay people to death not immoral? The money man behind the "Protect Marriage Act"

.....As Dissent readers know, OC resident Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., is a major funder of right-wing religious causes—creationism, establishing a Christian state, keeping gays down, etc.
.....And he has connections to our right-wing crew in the South Orange County Community College District. He was the key funder of Tustin’s Education Alliance, an organization with which some of our trustees (and our Chancellor) have recently associated and on whose board (SOCCCD trustee Pres) Don Wagner currently sits.
.....Further, he’s a close pal of—you guessed it—Trustee, and former chair of the OC GOP, Tom “Prince of Darkness” Fuentes.
.....Well, Ahmanson is the subject of a Gustavo Arellano’s article in today’s OC Weekly: OC FUNDIE FUNDER GIVES MONEY TO WACKY REEPS, HOMO-HATERS—AND LOU CORREA?!.
.....Some excerpts:

.....The most influential Orange County man you've never heard of is undoubtedly Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., heir to the Home Savings … fortune. He rarely makes public appearances due to suffering from Tourette's Syndrome, but that hasn't stopped him from giving millions of dollars away to some of the craziest causes imaginable: creationism, anti-gay marriage, anti-gay clerics in the Episcopalian Church, and so many others that in its list of America's most influential evangelicals a couple of years back, Time listed Howard and his wife Roberta as simply "The Financiers."
.....It's no surprise then, that Ahmanson has so far been the top individual donor to the Protect Marriage Act, the November ballot initiative that wants to create a California constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman. Through his private philanthropic enterprise, Fieldstead and Co., Ahmanson has donated an amazing $400,000 to the initiative—even more than Focus on the Family and topped only by the National Organization for Marriage, a nationwide group whose campaign headquarters to defeat those marryin' gays are in Santa Ana. And remember: this money was spent just to get the ballot measure qualified for November—heaven knows how much money Ahmanson will donate to this cause for the rest of the year.
.....Going through Fieldstead's campaign contributions (he was also one of the principal funders behind Proposition 22, the 2000 measure that the California State Supreme Court recently overturned to allow homosexual nuptials [sic]), we found Ahmanson also gives money to the county's crazy Republicans—last year, he donated to supervisors John Moorlach, Pat Bates, Janet Nguyen and Diane Harkey; Assemblymember Chuck Devore and Mimi Walters; Dana Point Mayor Diane Harkey, and DA Tony Rackauckas, while 2006 saw him donate to the campaigns of Irvine councilmember Christina Shea, Costa Mesa Minutemen councilmembers Allan Mansoor and Wendy Leece, South Orange County Community College District trustee (and former OC GOP chair) Tom Fuentes, and more to Walters and Devore. If the local Democratic Party had any brains, they'd pull a Jeremiah Wright on all these people for accepting money from such a paleo-conservative (just read up on his mentor, R.J. Rushdoony—and the Wikipedia entry doesn't do justice to the looniness of the man. Or consider that when the Orange County Register's Peter Larsen interviewed Howard and Roberta for a 2004 story, Howard said of countries that stone adulterers and homosexuals, "It would still be a little hard to say that if one stumbled on a country that was doing that, that it is inherently immoral, to stone people for these things," and that Howard saw "homosexuality as an illness akin to alcoholism, which treatment might cure."). But they won't do that, because to criticize politicians for taking money from Ahmanson means they'll have to go after one of their own: State Senator Lou Correa….