THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 16, 1994 TAG: 9410160068
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY TONY WHARTON AND ESTHER DISKIN, STAFF WRITERS
LENGTH: Long : 106 lines
Gambling as big business seemed to belong in the big cities and the neon lights of Las Vegas.
Now it has arrived in the birthplace of the nation, where not so long ago you couldn't even shop on Sunday because you were supposed to be in church or with your family.
The state announced last week that the first horse-racing track with pari-mutuel betting will be built in New Kent County.
That's only a 90-minute drive from much of Hampton Roads. The winning applicant, Ohio businessman Arnold Stansley, plans to make it even more convenient to play the ponies by opening off-track betting parlors in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake.
A state lottery paved the way for horse racing. Racing may be followed by riverboat casino gambling, likely to be a hot topic with state lawmakers next year.
Welcome to the New Dominion, which looks less like the Old Dominion all the time and more like the rest of everyone-place-your-bets America. Now after Virginians attend church on Sunday, they can go shopping and buy a lottery ticket, too.
As Virginia sheds its puritanical past to join the national betting pool, some worry about where the temptation to gamble will lead, both for the communities adopting it and their citizens.
It isn't news that gambling is widely accepted nationally. LasVegas is marketed as a family vacation destination, 36 states plus the District of Columbia sponsor lotteries, and states are rushing to get riverboat casinos ahead of their neighbors. Only two, Hawaii and Utah, have no legal gambling.
Now the gaming industry's attention is focused on Virginia.
``You're going to bring in horses, and you chased Mickey Mouse out. This is a shock,'' said the University of Denver's Andy Divine, who has observed the changes in Colorado cities since that state allowed casino gambling in 1991.
Divine, director of the university's school of hotel, restaurant and tourism management, said Las Vegas first changed the common thinking about big-time gambling: ``You can have compatibility between family outings and games of chance.''
Norfolk Del. Jerrauld Jones, who's trying to get riverboat casinos approved, declared: ``Gaming is a $335 billion dollar industry. It's the biggest thing in this country.
``It's just entertainment with games of chance. You'll find the same thing, going to a Catholic bingo game or taking part in a raffle. It's just part of American life today.''
For some, the economic lure pales against the moral prohibitions against gambling.
Ghouse Hyder, an Imam - or senior adviser - for the Tidewater Muslim community, went to Atlantic City, N.J., for a pair of hot August days with his wife and their daughters, both in their 20s. They strolled the boardwalk. They swam during the day and dined out at night.
They didn't touch the slot machines. They didn't roll the dice. They didn't even think about gambling.
``In Islam, gambling is forbidden, the same as fornication, adultery and drinking,'' Hyder said. ``Islam does not respect money which is not out of sweating. You have to work hard for your money.''
Walking in the way of temptation and resisting it fosters moral backbone, captured in the Arabic word ``taqwa,'' which Hyder translates as ``an immunity, a resistance to deviation.''
Other religious leaders say that gambling - with strict legal controls - can offer entertainment without eroding community standards.
James Parke, a priest at Church of the Ascension in Virginia Beach, worries about the infiltration of organized crime into race-track gambling. But he believes gambling can be kept clean with strict state regulation, such as the laws governing bingo games.
But he and other religious leaders say that betting poses a dangerous temptation in a world where people often lack necessary self-control. They also worry about the implications if the government exploits people's weaknesses to raise money, even for programs to benefit the community.
They say the gambling industry doesn't provide a stable funding source for programs needed to build a strong society, such as education.
``Anything that needs to be done should be supported out of tax revenue. The idea that a lottery or anything else would save public programs is not the way to go,'' said Dow Chamberlain, executive director of the Interfaith Center for Public Policy.
Chamberlain's organization, which focuses much of its energy on poverty-related and education issues, has not taken a stand on gambling.
Still, Chamberlain, who is also a United Methodist pastor, worries about gambling's grip on people living in poverty. He says there is a reason for the allure: Poor people have a different perspective on wealth - and how it is created - than the middle class.
Gambling, he says, makes the middle class question one of its basic presumptions: ``On a very visceral level, they are upset by people who feel life is a matter of luck rather than of controlling one's destiny.''
Hitting the gambling jackpot changes the destiny of communities, often in ways that can't be predicted. Small towns or rural areas like New Kent County, unlike big cities, often find it hardest to absorb those changes.
The old mining towns of Colorado found new wealth in casinos, but there were trade-offs, Divine points out.
``What we had here in the mountains, everybody recounts that these were sleepy, largely deserted mining towns,'' he said. ``Very few people visited, they were off the beaten track. People became accustomed to a very laid-back environment.
``Then the casinos came in. The land values quadrupled. You've got all these people. It's changing, obviously forever, the complexion of those towns.'' by CNB