How close the electronic gambling bill came to passing no one will ever know. At different times, legislative supporters in the Alabama House of Representatives claimed they were within two or three votes of being able to pass Senate Bill (SB) 380.
Opponents said it was never that close, that several representatives counted on by the gambling crowd were prepared to vote “no” to keep slot machine gambling from being legalized in Alabama.
No one will ever know for sure. What is known is that some legislators were still playing games on showdown day in Montgomery. Heading into the chamber April 21, everyone knew the gamblers did not have the votes. That made some last-minute declarations of opposition to SB 380 a little suspect even though they were appreciated.
What is clear is the commitment of a number of House members like Arthur Payne, of Trussville, who helped organize the opposition and turned back a gigantic effort by the state’s gambling crowd to spread its vice across Alabama. The list provided by legislative leaders of House members committed to vote “no” on the gambling bill (see graphic, page 3) is the best information available since no vote was actually recorded.
The list of state senators who voted against SB 380 is a report of the actual vote when gamblers were able to ram through their plans after their initial effort failed.
Alabama citizens are indebted to the legislators who fought with conviction and courage against pressures and threats from major gambling power brokers inside the state Legislature and the influential lobbyists hired by the gambling crowd. These legislators deserve the thanks of a grateful citizenry for helping to keep the evils of gambling curtailed in Alabama.
Those legislators whose names do not appear on the list of those opposing SB 380 deserve critical scrutiny for their openness to spreading gambling across the state.
Legislators were able to defeat slot machine gambling, in part, because of the efforts of concerned citizens who wrote and called expressing their opposition to gambling. That effort, orchestrated by Alabama Citizens Action Program, helped legislators know that a large portion of Alabama’s people wants no part of gambling and does not want to waste precious time and money fighting this battle again.
Someday a study may be made to determine what part the announcement of an FBI corruption investigation around the efforts to pass SB 380 played in the bill’s final outcome. The announcement certainly took the wind out of gambling’s sails for a few days. It also offered irrefutable evidence that corruption is the handmaid of gambling. In addition to the charges of fixed slot machines paying out more than $1 million to one prominent public official, the FBI investigation turned up allegations of offers up to $250,000 for votes approving slot machine gambling.
It does not take many such instances to bring back images of Phenix City in the 1950s and the stranglehold gambling and corruption had on Alabama. No decent human being wants to return to those days.
At this writing, most of the gambling casinos in Alabama are closed. We hope all will be closed soon. The Alabama Supreme Court has clearly outlined what constitutes bingo in Alabama, and none of the machines in the casinos has passed that six-point test yet.
The Governor’s Task Force on Illegal Gambling has sought only to enforce the laws of Alabama. We hope the legal maneuvering over who heads up that task force will be settled soon and all of the casinos will be boarded up. After all, in this state, it is against the law to own a slot machine or have a slot machine in one’s possession.
In the meantime, some of the gambling crowd is howling like a kicked dog. Ronnie Gilley, owner of Country Crossing in Dothan, publicly pouted on a blog April 20 and 21, threatening to leave the state if he could not get electronic gambling. What a change from the beginnings of his development when he planned to put a country music center in Enterprise, a place where gambling was never a possibility. So much for his commitment to “family entertainment.”
The legislative session has been like a roller-coaster ride on the gambling issue. One side seemed to have the edge and then the other. But now it is over — at least for the time being.
Now Baptists can ask how a state where almost one out of four people is a member of a Southern Baptist church came so close to passing electronic gambling. That was the question of a prominent Baptist leader visiting Alabama during the final week of the legislative session. After reading about the gambling debate and learning about the number of Baptists in Alabama, he asked if the majority were “nominal Christians.” By that, he wanted to know if they were Baptist Christians in name only.
That is a serious question. When a Baptist sponsors SB 380, when a Baptist attempts to define slot machine gambling in a way to get around the Supreme Court’s decision, when Baptist legislators, county officials and businessmen support gambling, when gambling can come within a breath of becoming law in a state so largely Baptist, one can legitimately ask about the vitality of the Christian faith here.
Are we guilty of “quoting the Bible by the yard and living it by the inch,” as one person recently suggested?
The unfortunate truth is that people’s morals are more likely to resemble those of their peer group than to take shape around the tenets of their faith. That was the conclusion of a Barna Group survey released in October 2006.
Barna examined 16 moral issues, including gambling, and found behaviors of born-again and non-born-again subjects to be “virtually identical.” The survey also noted a growing acceptance of behaviors such as gambling by younger born-again believers.
It found that younger believers “feel that shaping influences such as family, church and community have failed them.”
Perhaps that is a key to understanding what is happening in Alabama. Perhaps the church has failed to be clear about biblical moral teaching regarding gambling and other important issues.
To be sure, playing a slot machine does not determine one’s eternal destiny. But one who loves God through faith in Jesus with heart and soul, mind and strength will reflect such a personal character that evils like gambling will never have a chance.
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