Howard Ahmanson’s explanation made no sense. Not surprisingly, his money is inherited.

Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson, Jr. (born 1950) is an heir of the Home Savings bank fortune built by his father, Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson, Sr. Ahmanson Jr. is a multi-millionaire philanthropist and financier of the causes of many conservative Christian cultural, religious and political organizations.

He lives in Orange County, California. He has been married to journalist Roberta Green Ahmanson since 1986. He is somewhat reclusive and has Tourette syndrome;[1] his wife usually communicates with the media and others on his behalf.

This is from Wikipedia so who knows how accurate it is.

Controversial beliefs

Ahmanson was a lifelong friend of R. J. Rushdoony, and his ties to the Christian Reconstructionist movement continue to be a source of controversy. For example, in an article on the Episcopal Diocese of Washington website attacking the American Anglican Council, Jim Naughton emphasized Ahmanson’s ties with Rushdoony.[5] Ahmanson told the Orange County Register in 1985, “My goal is the total integration of biblical law into our lives.” After a $3,000 contribution to Linda Lingle, a Republican running for governor of Hawaii, was returned in 2002, the Ahmansons admitted they had an image problem and let the Orange County Register do a five-part series on them in 2004 to give the public a more accurate view of their work and beliefs.[6]

Ahmanson seems to have moderated his views to adopt a broader but still extremely far-right Dominionist political theology. He is reported to have “never supported his mentor’s calls for the death penalty for homosexuals”;[1] rather, as the Orange County Register reported in 2004, “he stops just short of condemning the idea”, saying that he “no longer consider[s] [it] essential” to stone people who are deemed to have committed certain immoral acts. Ahmanson also told the Register, “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. But I don’t think it’s at all a necessity.”[7] Also in 2004, when asked by Max Blumenthal for Salon if “she and her husband would still want to install the supremacy of biblical law”, Roberta Ahmanson replied: “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.”[3]

In any case, Ahmanson was (at the time of Naughton’s article) a member of an Episcopal parish,[8] and in the 2004 Salon profile he distanced himself from some of Rushdoony’s opinions on homosexuality.[3][9] He has supported certain organizations of the ex-gay movement; these, quite naturally, do not promote the death penalty for homosexuals; rather, they regard homosexuality as a condition to be dealt with similarly to alcoholism and drug addiction.

In 2008 Ahmanson’s company Fieldstead and Co. contributed $995,000 to the YES on 8 campaign according to the Los Angeles Times “Follow the donors” page. Prop 8 which was on the November 2008 ballot for California voters eliminated the rights of homosexual couples to marry. [10]