Casino debate sidesteps morality issue

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PORTLAND – The debate over a $650 million casino and resort has centered on economic development, job creation and tax relief. So far, there has been no serious public discussion about the morality of gambling.

The opposition group Casinos No! isn’t raising moral issues, and the Christian Civic League of Maine acknowledges it doesn’t have enough money to become a major player in the campaign leading to the statewide vote on Nov. 4.

In a state that was a 19th century pioneer of the nation’s Prohibition laws, moral issues related to gambling have been largely ignored so far.

“This has never been an issue about whether gambling is a sin,” Dennis Bailey of Casinos No! said. “There are people in our group who feel that way, but that’s not the issue for a majority of people.”

Bailey said Casinos No! opposes a casino on grounds it would cost more jobs than it creates. Casino supporters, meanwhile, contend the project would create 5,000 jobs and another 5,000 spinoff jobs.

The Maine Council of Churches, whose members include the Roman Catholic Diocese of Portland and seven Protestant denominations, has been studying the casino issue and plans to announce its position this week.

Tom Ewell, executive director, said the casino issue merits an examination of the role of gambling in society.

“We’re particularly concerned about the morality of substituting gambling for progressive tax reform,” Ewell said. “That’s an issue that needs to be examined in far greater depth.”

Erin Lehane from Think About It, which supports a casino, said the decision on morality is an individual one. She doesn’t view it as a major campaign issue because she said Mainers don’t like being preached to.

In the end, Mainers who already have a lottery, bingo and state-run liquor stores must decide whether they’re comfortable with a casino.

“It’s for the people to draw the line,” Lehane said. “That’s what this vote gives us an opportunity to do.”

Christian Potholm, a professor of political science at Bowdoin College, suggested that as gambling has become ubiquitous around the country, Maine’s attitudes have come to mirror those in most other states.

“With the lottery and people going to Foxwoods and all that, the general sense among a lot of people is that gambling is OK, or that it’s none of my business,” he said.

Potholm said he doubts that questions of morality will be a major factor in the campaign.

“Certainly, during the last 40 years there’s been a shift in Maine attitudes toward less intrusion in other people’s lives and less self-righteousness on the part of the population,” he said.

One group that would like to see the morality of gambling emerge as a key issue in the casino campaign – but does not expect that to happen – is the Christian Civic League, which opposes the Sanford project.

While acknowledging that there is no direct prohibition of gambling in the Bible, the league believes passages in both the Old and New Testaments promote a work ethic that’s inconsistent with a casino or lottery.

“Our biggest concern is that the thinking and practices of people change in the direction of hoping to get lucky instead of planning and living their lives in a way that has them work and save for the future,” said Michael Heath, the league’s executive director.

Heath said a casino on the scale of the one proposed by the Passamaquoddy Tribe and the Penobscot Nation would exacerbate gambling addiction, breed crime, destroy families and exploit the poor.

While the league lacks the money to wage an advertising campaign to promote its stance, it hopes to organize a grass-roots effort focusing in large part on church groups across the state, he said.

Heath plans to appear at a fund-raising dinner in Boothbay Harbor on Sept. 19 with former Gov. Angus King, who was at odds with the league because of his support of gay-rights legislation.

King now finds himself allied with the organization on the casino issue and will speak at the event to raise money to fight the referendum.

Heath estimates that “at least tens of thousands” of Mainers will approach the casino issue with the morality question uppermost in their minds.

That number, he suggested, could shift the balance in an off-year election where turnout could be low.

“They will ask themselves, ‘Is this the right thing to do from a moral perspective?’ and in most cases the answer they will come up with is no,” he said.

During the battle to establish the state lottery and in the decades after its approval in the mid-1970s, legendary editor J. Russell Wiggins of The Ellsworth American fired off a stream of editorials excoriating lotteries for elevating luck over thrift and hard work.

The weekly’s current editor, Hugh Bowden, said that if Wiggins were alive today, he would be opposing the casino tooth and nail.

“I suspect he would be lambasting it with all of the thunder he could muster,” said Bowden, whose editorial stance has been anti-casino.