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By Greg Trotter, Religion News Service
WASHINGTON: The moral opposition to gambling
might be gasping its last breaths.
As more and more states turn to casinos and
gambling to fill shrinking budget coffers, the voices of the
religious opposition are struggling to convince people that it is
morally wrong.
It’s an uphill fight: A recent study by
Ellison Research showed that 70 percent of Americans do not consider
gambling to be a sin.
“It’s not acceptable in today’s society to
present arguments based solely on religion or morals,” said I.
Nelson Rose, who teaches gambling law at the Whittier Law School in
California.
Thirty years ago, gamblers had to try their luck
with scratch-off tickets or at casinos in Atlantic City or Las
Vegas. Today, only two states—Utah and Hawaii—do not have some
form of legalized gambling, according to the American Gaming
Association. The other 48 have anteed up for tribal casinos,
commercial casinos, racetracks, jai alai or lotteries.
Forty-three states have lotteries, mostly
marketed as voluntary taxes for education, and 12 states now have
commercial casinos.
Gambling contributes around 5 percent to state
budgets—double what it was five years ago, said the Rev. Richard
McGowan, a Boston College professor and author of The Gambling
Debate, published in January.
In some states, it contributes much more,
McGowan said—11 percent in Louisiana and 18 percent in South
Dakota. Experts say the gambling industry is growing and shows no
signs of stopping any time soon.
“The Church’s opposition to gambling has not
been widely effective,” said the Rev. Tom Grey, spokesman for the
National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, “because [the
Church is] not relevant in an irreverent age.”
Grey, who fought gambling for years from the
pulpit as a United Methodist pastor, said the moral argument that
gambling is a sin is too easily swept aside as impeding the personal
freedom of others.
As a result, Grey’s anti-gambling coalition
avoids explicit mentions of religion, and presents more economically
grounded arguments that center around addiction, bankruptcy and
crime, Grey said.
“There’s a cost when people lose—they
chase the loss,” Grey said. “It’s the government’s dirty
little secret. The house always wins.”
Some states, such as Kansas, Maryland, Kentucky
and Massachusetts, are in various stages of trying to expand the
gambling options they already have.
Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick and Kentucky
Gov. Steve Beshear, both Democrats, recently proposed bills to open
commercial casinos, citing jobs and more money for economic
development, education and other state programs as the payoffs.
“Legislators and governors have hard decisions
to make,” said Frank Fahrenkopf, executive director of the
American Gaming Association, which represents commercial casinos.
“And gaming is capital-intensive and produces jobs.”
In a 2007 Gallup survey, 63 percent of Americans
had no moral qualms about gambling. Earlier this year, Gallup found
that 65 percent of Americans participated in some form of gambling,
46 percent played the lottery and 24 percent had been to a casino.
“Problem gamblers”—those who become
addicted, go broke or turn to criminal activity—only make up 1
percent of those who gamble, Fahrenkopf said.
Still, Fahrenkopf noted, gambling is not “a
panacea,” pointing to Detroit as an example of a gambling city
that has struggled to turn around. The problem there was a lack of
viable businesses around the casinos, he said.
Many states that are expanding gambling are just
trying to keep up with their neighbors.
Kansas recently enacted legislation to become
the first state to have state-owned casinos. The state Lottery
Commission is considering developers to build and operate four
state-run casinos—in part to keep money from flowing to casinos in
neighboring Oklahoma and Missouri.
The Kansas casinos are projected to rake in $200
million a year in revenue, said Sally Lunsford, spokeswoman for the
Kansas commission. About 2 percent of the take will go to developing
programs for problem gambling, she said.
Money, she said, has to come from somewhere.
“There’s not a whole heck of a lot of people who are raising
their hands, saying, ‘Please, raise my taxes!’” she said.
Still, whether or not her voice is being heard,
Barbara Knickelbein is not stopping her fight against gambling, even
though her organization, No Casinos Maryland, changed its name from
Religious Communities United in Opposition to Casino-Style Gambling,
as it was known when it launched in 1995.
A voter referendum that would put 15,000 slot
machines at various racetracks and other locations will be on the
Maryland ballot in November. The projected $600 million that the
slots would produce would be unsteady, and an unfair tax on the
poor, Knickelbein said.
The organization focuses its opposition on
morality or economics, depending on the audience, she said, but
religious groups have a stake in the outcome.
“It’s the churches who are going to have to
pick up the pieces,” she said, “when families are torn apart by
gambling.”
Copyright © 2008 The Pew Forum on Religion
& Public Life.
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