U.S. Supreme Court Says States Can Legalize Sports Betting

Gambling,

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, May 14, 2018

On Monday the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal law that had generally prevented states from legalizing gambling on sports.

Family Council President Jerry Cox released a statement saying, “Any expansion of gambling is a bad thing. This court ruling sets the stage for states like Arkansas to become awash in a sea of gambling. Arkansas law already generally prohibits betting on ballgames and other sports. We need to make sure that ban stays in place and applies to the racetracks at Hot Springs and West Memphis.”

Cox dismissed the idea that sports betting would be good for Arkansas’ economy. “In December consultants for the State of Arkansas told our legislators that the State might be able to collect tax money from sports betting if the U.S. Supreme Court ever issued an opinion like this one. You can’t gamble and tax your way to economic prosperity. Gambling preys on the poor. It’s linked to an increase in domestic violence, homelessness, and divorce. Sports betting is going to appeal to younger people who are more likely to develop a gambling addiction. For every dollar the State would get in tax revenue from sports betting, it would have to spend a lot more on social services trying to clean up the mess that gambling makes in our communities.”

Cox said his group will oppose any expansion of gambling in Arkansas. “Out-of-state groups are trying to open casinos in Pine Bluff, Texarkana, and elsewhere. Now I expect we’ll see groups wanting to legalize sports betting in Arkansas, too. Between the State Lottery and the casino games in Hot Springs and West Memphis, Arkansas already has enough problems from gambling. We don’t need any more.”

Family Council is a conservative education and research organization based in Little Rock, Arkansas.

###

Photo Credit: By Bobak at en.wikipedia (Transferred from en.wikipedia by SreeBot) [CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

READ MORE

NY Times Gets Abstinence Education Wrong

Current Events,

Last weekend The New York Times published an opinion-editorial that managed to cram a remarkable amount of misinformation into a short column.

The editors lamented the federal government’s efforts to promote abstinence-only sex education, calling it “an anti-science agenda” that “defies all common sense,” and writing, “There is no good evidence that abstinence-only education prevents or delays young people from having sex, leads them to have fewer sexual partners or reduces rates of teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted infections. And given that almost all Americans engage in premarital sex, this vision of an abstinent-outside-of-marriage world is simply at odds with reality.”

Our friends at Family Research Council summed it up very well:

Did the Times fire all of its fact-checkers? The CDC blew that myth to bits in 2016, explaining that not only does the abstinence message work — it positively affects every area of kids’ lives. “High school students who are virgins rate significantly and consistently better in nearly all health-related behaviors and measures than their sexually active peers.” That includes everything from “bike helmet and seat belt use to substance abuse, diet, doctor’s visits, exercise, and even tanning bed use.” Abstinence education is like one-stop shopping for healthier behavior.

Among other things, The New York Times editorial criticized the Trump Administration for ending the Obama-era Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program.

As we wrote last year, the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program began in 2010. Its goal was to provide federal grant money for evidence-based programs designed to prevent teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

Unfortunately, these “evidence-based” programs generally did not focus on abstinence. If anything, abstinence got a passing mention while the bulk of the programs focused on contraceptive use.

From 2010 – 2017, organizations — including Planned Parenthood — received federal funds to facilitate these teen pregnancy prevention programs across the U.S.

The result?

In some cases students who went through the “evidence-based” pregnancy prevention program actually had higher pregnancy rates than students who did not.

For example, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest received $4 million in grant money to conduct a teen pregnancy prevention program. An official evaluation concluded,

After offering the program over nine months to middle and high school students during or after school, [youth who went through the program] were as likely as youth offered a four-hour alternative program, to report causing a pregnancy or becoming pregnant, having sexual intercourse, or having recent sexual intercourse without an effective method of birth control both immediately following the conclusion of the program, as well as in an assessment occurring 12 months later. . . . Immediately after the program, . . . females reported becoming pregnant at a higher rate than females receiving the alternative program.

In other words, the federal government gave millions of dollars to an abortion provider for a teen pregnancy prevention program that actually increased teen pregnancies. And apparently the editors at The New York Times believe that was a good use of taxpayer funds.

Family Council has supported abstinence education in Arkansas since the 1990’s. We need to address teen pregnancy in America, but handing out federal tax dollars to groups like Planned Parenthood simply is not the way to do it.

Photo Credit: By Haxorjoe [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons

READ MORE