On most of these points, today's gambling opponents no doubt concur. Rarely, however, do they speak so plainly, or with such mellifluous thunder, about God, sin, or morality. They occasionally employ the m-word when talking about the industry, but as for the gamblers themselves—well, nobody seems to be calling them "serfs of Satan" these days. They're treated with compassion and support, as heroes who've overcome a predatory business determined to destroy them.
Before the anti-gambling conference at the Sheraton, I ask Fahrenkopf's sparring partner Tom Grey about this shift in rhetoric: the tendency to downplay morality in arguments against gambling, the elision of criticism aimed directly at individual gamblers. "My arguments are moral," he replies. "They're about just economics, good uncorrupted government. That's social morality. When you get into personal morality, the person gambling is already getting beat. He doesn't need me to criticize him—he's already losing. Our battle is with the product and the purveyors of the product."
Whatever the rationale, the effect is noteworthy. Most of the conference's organizers are Methodists like Grey, and a majority of attendees are Christians of one sort or another. The litany of woes they ascribe to gambling in their presentations and pamphlets are the same ones McIntyre invoked nearly a century ago—family dissolution, crime, bankruptcy—but they hardly sound like preachers. There are plenty of statistics bandied about during the conference but few Bible verses.
Instead, gambling opponents address the subject in terms of economics and public policy. The gambling industry promotes gambling as a force that can generate jobs, increase tax revenues, and rev up related industries such as dining and lodging. In turn, the industry's opponents claim the costs of gambling far outweigh any benefits.
Naturally, both sides have compiled statistics that bolster their cases, and each side says the other is lying. One thing seems fairly evident, though: If the gambling industry really is having a devastating impact on American culture, the general public seems fairly oblivious to it. In a Gallup Lifestyle Poll released in March 2004, for example, only 6 percent of those surveyed said gambling had been "a source of problems for their families." In contrast, a similar Gallup poll released a year earlier found that 31 percent of those surveyed said that alcohol had been a source of problems for their families.
Even among social conservatives who are avowedly concerned about gambling, it's not a big concern. James Dobson's group, Focus on the Family, employs an "analyst for gambling research," Chad Hills, but when I ask him where anti-gambling activism fits into the priorities of his organization as a whole, he says, "It's definitely one of our top 10 issues. But not necessarily up there in the top five, that's for sure. I would say that gambling falls within the 5-to-7 range."
John Kindt, a professor of business administration at the University of Illinois who writes frequently about gambling, says it will take a "casino Katrina"—the economic crash of an entire city or region that has made gambling a cornerstone of its local economy—to awaken people to the perils of gambling. "It's going to happen," he insists, "and it's actually going to end up costing a lot more than Katrina did." But Kindt and others have been making such dire predictions for some time now. And so far, while gambling has surely ruined myriad lives, there's no casino Katrina they can point to.
In his 1996 book The Luck Business, the influential gambling opponent Robert Goodman painted a sad picture of the Illinois town of Joliet, which was hoping to benefit from riverboat gambling that was introduced in 1992. By 1996 only one new downtown business had opened—"a small takeout coffee shop"—and there was no new hotel or influx of tourists. The city's effort to revitalize itself via gambling, Goodman suggested, was a terrible flop.
Ten years later, Joliet's situation seems much brighter. Now the downtown area boasts a minor league baseball park and a new NASCAR racetrack. The casinos have provided hundreds of local jobs, and the tax revenue they generate has helped Joliet improve its streets, sewers, lights, and sidewalks, and fund local schools. Joliet is the fastest-growing city east of the Rocky Mountains, and dozens of new restaurants and bars have opened there in the last decade, including four in the spring of 2004. According to 2004 FBI statistics, Joliet suffers fewer murders, robberies, burglaries, and assaults than Salt Lake City.
Which is not to say that gambling is the can't-miss miracle cure-all its boosters often claim it is, or that it doesn't introduce problems and headaches of its own. But what industry doesn't? According to a brochure distributed by the National Coalition Against Legalized Gambling, "It takes three to five years for gamblers in a newly opened market to exhaust their resources. When addiction ripens in the market, so do the social costs." Las Vegas and Reno have had gambling for more than 70 years now, Atlantic City for 30. Many cities in the riverboat states and Colorado have featured gambling for more than a decade. And they're all still standing.
Meanwhile, all across America, you can point to cities that built their economies around more traditional industries—cities that pursued the Puritan ethic of hard work, the production of tangible goods—only to suffer "manufacturing Katrinas" and "farming Katrinas." As any church that's found financial salvation through bingo knows, God works in mysterious ways.
The Gambling Vote
Last fall conservative activists in Iowa appeared to have some success in making Massachusetts governor and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney see things their way. For some time now, state Senate President Robert Travaglini (D-Boston) has been trying to pass legislation that would allow the state's four racetracks to add slot machines. Stacey Cargill, the leader of an anti-gambling coalition in Iowa and also a local Republican power broker, saw an opportunity to send a message to Romney. "If Mitt Romney is going to engage in incorporating casino slots as a form of economic development for the state of Massachusetts, we will spread the word and ask the state of Iowa to vote for another candidate in the caucuses," Cargill told The Boston Globe.
Fahrenkopf dismisses such threats. "If I were Mitt Romney, I'd say, 'Wait a minute, the people of Iowa voted for gaming,' " he says. "And every eight years in those counties that opted for gaming, it has to come back to the polls again. Two years ago, 11 counties had to vote again. And all 11 counties voted to keep it."
In the past, Romney had been relatively open to the idea of expanding gambling in the interest of generating more tax revenues for Massachusetts. But just 10 days after Cargill publicized her plan, Romney wrote a letter to The Boston Globe declaring, "If someone would bring forth a gambling expansion proposal, it is not something I would support, given our economic circumstances and the social costs associated with gambling."
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