Gambling with the Future

There was a time in this nation and in our communities when vice was not considered to be a positive conduit for social structure or change. With the exception of Nevada, prostitution is still illegal. It also used to be that Nevada was the exception when it came to gambling. Now it is more difficult to identify those states where lotteries or other forms of gambling are not allowed. And in an effort to legitimize the business of gambling and sell it in a different package, it is referred to as the “gaming industry”.

Evidence suggests that this new “name tag” for what was once considered morally questionable by many is now not only an acceptable form of entertainment but is a potential source of state revenue from which – get this – our CHILDREN will benefit. Vice, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a moral depravity or corruption, a moral fault or failing, a defect or shortcoming, or a blemish or defect”. Yep, I’m sold. Sign my children up for a little depravity and add a moral failing or two while you’re reaching.

It is one thing for government to acknowledge and deal with a reality such as gambling. It is quite another matter altogether for the state to actively pursue, endorse, and actually encourage an act that has, statistically speaking, potentially destroyed more families than any other single vice. In the end, when the last paycheck has been cashed at the casino window – they offer this convenience, you know – and the last dollar has been dropped into a slot machine, it is ultimately the children of that wage earner who will suffer. Yet candidates for public office will try to convince us that somehow this “gaming” will actually benefit these same children whose careless parents gambled away the rent and grocery money.

Why is it that states have laws against such vice in the first place? What is it that the state had hoped to achieve by restricting, if not outright prohibiting, these acts that have historically proved to be harmful both directly and indirectly? Could it be that these so-called “victimless crimes” have proved time and again that they are not so “victimless” after all? And why is that states have decided that if our children are to be properly educated, lotteries and casinos that were once banned for good reason have now somehow become necessary?

Gambling, in whatever form and regardless of legality, is nothing more than “pie in the sky” with false promises of something for nothing. Of course we are warned that our odds of winning are something like a gazillion to one, but this warning is printed in very tiny letters on the backs of lottery tickets. Those who cannot afford glasses to read with certainly will not see this, and I dare say those who can read it will choose not to.

Churches and other ministries that specialize in addressing the havoc this scourge has wrought on us have since written pages and pages of warnings about the effects of gambling on families and children, but somehow we are more willing to believe a political candidate’s empty, if questionable, promises of “better days ahead for education” while virtually ignoring those who are witnessing first-hand the disaster that is left in the wake of very poor public policy.

Politicians continue to insist that they want to represent us and fight for us and protect us and look after our interests. They insist that the “little people”, the “working people”, and the “poor” have been virtually ignored in our society and have been left behind by the evil, capitalist economy. Then they try to convince us that the only way to help these disenfranchised folks climb out of the cellar of life is to initiate a lottery. What they fail to tell us is what is far too true: it is the very disenfranchised who are more likely to risk what little they have in the vain and desperate hope of “hitting the big one”.

Some things are wrong. They have always been wrong and will always be wrong. And the argument is not so much what may or may not be written in or directly quoted from Holy Scripture as what the consequences of morally questionable behavior will certainly bring. For government to be in active pursuit of “industry” whose profit comes directly from its customers’ losses is in direct conflict with the concept of government providing for the “common good”. It is bad public policy and, like vice, needs to be put back in its place and recognized for what it truly is.