{"id":30232,"date":"2012-01-10T18:00:28","date_gmt":"2012-01-10T18:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/faith_leaders_criticize_decision_to_legalize_expansion_of_online_gambling\/"},"modified":"2012-01-10T18:00:28","modified_gmt":"2012-01-10T18:00:28","slug":"faith_leaders_criticize_decision_to_legalize_expansion_of_online_gambling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=30232","title":{"rendered":"Faith Leaders Criticize Decision to Legalize Expansion of Online Gambling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Phil Blackwell, pastor of Chicago Temple (United Methodist Church) in Chicago, said the opinion legalized the lottery online, but it did not change the fact that the Illinois lottery is &#8220;cynical, short-sighted and cowardly.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Blackwell characterized the thinking of Illinois lawmakers this way: &#8220;&#8216;Since people are going to throw away their money on gambling anyway, let&#8217;s get as much of it as we can.&#8217; Unlike levying a &#8216;sin tax&#8217; on the sale of alcohol and cigarettes, by devising and promoting the lottery the state government is the pusher of the &#8216;sin&#8217; itself, dedicated to producing more and bigger losers in order to make it pay.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/ethicsdaily.com\/faith-leaders-criticize-decision-to-legalize-expansion-of-online-gambling-cms-19077\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Phil Blackwell, pastor of Chicago Temple (United Methodist Church) in Chicago, said the opinion legalized the lottery online, but it did not change the fact that the Illinois lottery is &#8220;cynical, short-sighted and cowardly.&#8221; Blackwell characterized the thinking of Illinois<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=30232\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,94,87,114,151,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-blogging-the-internet","category-gambling","category-law-legal-issues","category-politics-in-general","category-religion-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30232\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}