(On Election Day, we'll have updated coverage throughout the day and night on explorehoward.com)

If the referendum to legalize slot machines is defeated next week, opponents will give a lot of credit to local religious leaders.

The faith-based community "is one of the main pillars of our campaign," said Bridgett Frey, a spokeswoman for Marylanders United To Stop Slots, the statewide coalition that is leading the charge against slot machines.

Howard County's faith-based community is no exception. Religious leaders interviewed by The Howard County Times this week almost uniformly opposed the referendum.

They argued that gambling frays families and communities, targets the poor and causes addictions that are hard to recover from. The state should not legalize it, they said.

The Rev. Steve Sorensen, pastor of the Community Bible Church in Highland, said legalizing slots would fuel a "get-rich quick mentality, and would help to foment the attitude of the love of money."

The Bible is clear about such attitudes, he said. In the New Testament, St. Paul talks about the love of money as the root of all evils. "It doesn't inspire hard work and earning something," Sorensen said of gambling.

The Rev. Stephen Green, associate pastor at Columbia Presbyterian Church, said legalizing slots would hurt the poor the most.

"It functions as a tax on the poor because the poor tend to be the ones who play the Lotto and the slots," Green said.

He said he understood the argument that if slots are not legalized in Maryland, gamblers would take their money elsewhere. But, he said, the state still had the moral obligation not to legalize an immoral activity.

"There is still an issue of how you do what is right," Green said.

The Rev. Edward Simpson, pastor of Harvester Baptist Church, in Ellicott City, agreed that the state should not legalize gambling just because other states allowed it.

"The other states ought not to be doing it either," Simpson said.

Unlike in business, where people come together for a mutually beneficial result, gambling fosters a winner-take-all mentality, Simpson said.

"In gambling, in order for me to win, somebody else has to lose. Basically I'm basing my gain on hoping somebody else has to lose," Simpson said.

The Rev. Mike Triplett, of the Church of the Resurrection in Ellicott City, said the Roman Catholic Church takes a firm stand against legalizing slot machines.

"It leads to poverty for a lot of people," Triplett said. "It can hurt families and break families apart. Especially when one of the partners has a gambling addiction it creates an extra strain."

A dissenting voice

Not all churches and religious leaders have taken a stand on the issue. The Rev. Cathy Ammlung, associate pastor of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Fulton, said her church has not taken an official position on the issue and the congregation had people on both sides.

"We do have people who might play the lottery or scratch-off ticket or something, so they don't see some specific moral problem per se," she said.

She said she herself wavered on the issue, but decided that if the state allowed the lottery, which is a form of gambling, it is inconsistent to ban slots.

"I find the argument against slots is kind of shutting the barn after the horse has escaped," she said.

But the other religious leaders interviewed came down firmly in the anti-slots camp. Many echoed Simpson's argument that with gambling, "we're wanting something so much, we're willing to compromise what's right to get it."

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