America’s gambling boom just ran headlong into one of the bluntest moral rebukes yet from a major religious leader.

President D. Todd Christofferson, the Second Counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, used the opening session of the church’s October general conference on Saturday to condemn sports betting, online casino games, and prediction markets.

He did not couch it in the soft language of “responsible gaming.” He called gambling “morally wrong” and challenged the idea that a wager becomes harmless simply because it is placed on a phone instead of across a casino table.

The church’s official summary of the Saturday morning session says Christofferson warned that easy access through smartphones has fueled an explosion in gambling and exposed teenagers and young adults to risks that once required a trip to a casino or racetrack.

He argued that the structure itself is the problem: one person’s gain requires another person’s loss, while the promise of something for nothing pulls time and attention away from better work. He urged listeners who walk away from gambling to put the saved money and hours into serving people and strengthening their homes.

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That distinction matters. The country did more than legalize more betting.

It put a betting counter in millions of pockets, wrapped it in slick apps, and invited people to place wagers during every commercial break, every inning, every injury report, and every news cycle.

The result is a culture in which losing money can be marketed as entertainment and chasing losses can be disguised as “engagement.”

The house no longer waits for the customer to walk through the door. It follows him home.

Church News reports that Christofferson deliberately widened his warning beyond familiar casino games. He named three fast-growing markets: sports betting, online casino games, and prediction markets, where users wager on outcomes ranging from elections and economic events to entertainment and religion.

He even pointed to markets taking bets on the timing of the Second Coming as an example of how far the practice has spread. His warning focused on what gambling crowds out—useful work and service—and what it can feed instead: greed, compulsive behavior, debt, and damage inside families.

Prediction markets are where this gets politically and legally interesting.

Supporters argue that these platforms are information markets, not casinos. Because traders put money behind their forecasts, the prices can reflect a crowd’s collective judgment about the likelihood of an event.

That can be useful. It can also sound a lot more respectable than saying people are betting on who wins, who loses, what happens next, or when a crisis arrives.

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The Associated Press notes that Christofferson’s position collides with the Trump administration’s legal argument that regulated prediction markets are not gambling and therefore should not be swept into state gambling bans such as Utah’s.

That dispute is already concrete in Utah, where officials contend prediction-market platforms should remain subject to the state’s anti-gambling laws. The platforms answer that federal commodities regulation gives them a different legal status and overrides state efforts to treat their contracts like ordinary bets.

Christofferson was not speaking as a minor commentator. As a member of the church’s three-man First Presidency, he delivered the warning from one of its highest offices while state and federal authorities are actively fighting over the industry’s legal boundaries.

That clash deserves an honest hearing rather than a lazy partisan response. A product can produce useful information and still carry a serious cultural cost.

A legal category does not settle a moral question. And a federal regulator’s definition does not erase what is happening to a family when a compulsive bettor drains the account from the couch.

Conservatives, especially, should be willing to confront that tension.

We talk constantly about the dignity of work, the importance of family, personal responsibility, and the corrosive effect of industries that profit from addiction. Those principles do not stop applying when the industry buys stadium naming rights, sponsors the pregame show, or calls a wager a “contract.”

Christofferson’s argument is ultimately about formation. Gambling trains the heart to want gain without creation, reward without service, and wealth without building anything.

It feeds the fantasy that the next click can do what patience, labor, saving, and discipline have always done.

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That does not mean every person who places a bet becomes an addict. It does mean the business model depends on keeping people betting, and the heaviest losses rarely come from the casual customer who walks away after one small wager.

McKay Coppins, whose reporting on the gambling boom was cited in the address, called Christofferson’s warning a powerful message about an urgent issue.

Christofferson did not stop at prohibition. He asked people to redirect the time and money they might have spent gambling toward good: helping others, strengthening families, and building something that lasts.

That is the part the gambling ads never show. Every dollar has another possible destination.

Every hour spent watching a parlay or refreshing a market could have gone toward a child, a business, a church, a neighbor, or a future.

America will keep debating where sports books and prediction markets fit inside the law. But Christofferson raised the harder question: What kind of people are we becoming when the easiest promise on the screen is that we can get something for nothing?

That question will not be answered by an app’s terms of service. It will be answered in homes, bank accounts, and habits long after the final score is posted.

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.

 

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