Fundamentalists Send Letter to Protest Online Gambling Bill

June 15, 2009 | News Category: Gaming Law

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Fundamentalist Christian groups have opposed gambling, especially online gambling, for a long time. As a reaction to Barney Frank's bill, which gives hope to those wishing to repeal the UIEGA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act), a number of conservative Christian groups banded together in order to protest.

The Christian groups joined together and sent a letter to Congress, arguing their side of the issue. Unfortunately for them, the letter contained misrepresentations, and even blatant lies about online gambling and its effects on children. The letter attempts to convince Congress that they should ignore concerns that have been brought up by others, such as trade agreements, increased revenue by taxation, economic growth, and of course, personal freedom. All this is meant to convince Congress to keep the ban against online gambling in place.

One of the main lies that the religious fundamentalists keep noting is that the incidence of gambling addiction is "three to four times higher with Internet gambling versus non-Internet gambling." These claims, however, have not yet been backed up, and have in fact been disproved by studies at the Division on Addictions at the Cambridge Health Alliance, a Harvard Medical School teaching affiliate. These studies have been conducted under the guidance of Dr. Howard Shaffer, who is an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Shaffer said that when the study was initiated, the researchers had expected that online gambling would have a higher incidence of addiction than land-based gambling, however, their assumption was incorrect and the level of Internet gambling addiction was shown to be of a very low level.

Similarities have been drawn between the letter Congress received and a fundamentalist Christian, Spencer Bachus, who constantly makes unsubstantiated claims regarding online gambling. Spencer Bachus, supported by his fanatical followers has made claims that half of the children in the United States have already tried online gambling. Bachus then claims that a quarter of those same children, those that have been exposed to online gambling, have attempted suicide. Most of the people who hear these claims, and take a moment, or less, to think about them, will come to the conclusion that the math does not make sense. For those who take it further and work the numbers, they will find that Bachus' claims mean that out of every eight teenagers in the United States, one of the eight has attempted suicide.

One could go so far as to say that these fundamental Christians do not seem to feel the need to deal in truth. To quote the old adage "Don't cloud the issue with facts."