Bishop hits airwaves to campaign against casino in Minnesota

April 19, 2005      

By Victoria Rebeck*

MINNEAPOLIS (UMNS)—Bishop Sally Dyck has taken to the airwaves to fight a proposal backed by the state’s governor, Tim Pawlenty, to establish a state-run casino in the Twin Cities.

“Not only does gambling create more social problems, but its costs exceed its benefits,” she says in a series of radio advertisements that started in five Minnesota markets April 11. The ads can be heard in Fergus Falls, Little Falls, Worthington, Rochester and New Ulm.

Pawlenty’s plan requires passage of a law that would, for the first time, allow casino gambling in the state. The proposal’s proponents say it will benefit the state’s general fund as well as the three tribal governments—Red Lake, White Earth, and Leech Lake—invited to be partners with the state in a Twin Cities-area casino. Currently all tribal casinos are authorized under federal law.

But Dyck, who leads the state’s United Methodists, is warning Minnesotans of the hidden costs to what she calls a simplistic policy. The radio ads, produced by the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition, a statewide interfaith lobbying group, dispute the economic promises of legalized gambling.

“For every dollar the state receives from gambling, three dollars are spend on its impact on Minnesotans,” Dyck says on the radio spots. This includes treatment for addicted gamblers, care for neglected children and victims of family violence, and financial assistance to those who end up in poverty because of their own or a family member’s gambling debts.

“I know you too want to alleviate crime, poverty and bankruptcy in our state,” she tells Minnesotans in one of the radio spots. “Yet our state legislature is poised to add these problems.”

The Minnesota Annual (regional) Conference of the United Methodist Church, with other faith organizations, helps govern and support the coalition through its membership in the Minnesota Council of Churches. The coalition received funding from Citizens Against Gambling Expansion to help raise awareness of what they see as a misguided plan that will create more problems than it solves.

Coalition Director Brian Rusche says the United Methodist Church’s historic passion for the issue led him to ask Dyck to be the organization’s spokesperson on this concern.

The United Methodist Church says in its Social Principles that “gambling is a menace to society, deadly to the best interests of moral, social, economic and spiritual life, and destructive to good government” The official statement, found in The Book of Discipline 2004, Paragraph 163G, points out that people are “victimized” by the practice and may become addicted.

In Dyck’s eyes, the real problems with gambling are more profound than whether it is a plentiful source of government revenue.

“One crucial reason church people should care about this issue is the welfare of children,” Dyck says. “Children are the ones who will be the most adversely affected by much of the economic issues before the state legislature now.

“Children are the most vulnerable people in our society. If you follow the economics and the morality, and you follow what is happening to the least, the lost, and the left out, all of those paths take you to children. These paths lead to abuse, neglect, poverty, family violence—all of those things affect children’s lives directly.”

In the radio ads, she says that addictive gambling among teens—once unheard of—affects 7 percent of U.S. teenagers.

“Children will grow up to lead our society’s institutions,” she says. “We should care about their nurture, education and safety because that will affect who they are as adults.”

Gambling is truly a moral issue, she says, “because gambling sucks people into an existence of poverty. You can be fairly wealthy and still get sucked into the poverty caused by the seduction of gambling.”

Dyck and Rusche also find suspect the state government’s attempts to invite Indian tribal governments to become partners in the state’s casino.

The failure of state-supported gambling to rise to the top of the list of hot-button social issues may be due to the nature of gambling as “one of those silent destroyers,” Dyck says. “Gambling may not be an issue for everyone, but it is for many people. And it creates social problems for which we all have to pay in one way or another—and not just in dollars. We all will have to deal with the costs of crime prevention, family violence, and the negative effects on children’s lives.”

*Rebeck is director of communication for the United Methodist Church's Minnesota Annual Conference.

News media contact: Kathy L. Gilbert, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.