[BluffTHIS!]

Engineer,

I am done with this thread after this post. I hope most posters here recognize the folly of attempting to publicly make the arguments you are making, even if you and some others don't.

FOF and others have an argument against gambling that goes like this:

1) gambling is a sin
2) gambling causes X to happen that is bad for people and society at large.
3) [implied] people shouldn't be allowed to do things that harm themselves and not others.

Now instead of focusing on rebutting #2 and #3, which leaves them only with #1 which is only tenable to a minority of the population and politicians, you instead want to engage them on a battlefield of THEIR CHOOSING, i.e what is or is not the proper interpretation of the Bible and Christian morality. Which then allows them to paint you as anti-Christian/morality and be much more effective in rallying to their cause those who in general believe the same as them, but aren't otherwise likely to participate in the political process. You thus just help them to mobilize more support for THEIR purposes.

We aren't some kind of general purpose political party that engages FOF on a wide range of issues and needs to spend the effort on portraying them in a negative light overall. Rather we are a special interest group that can't afford to engage in those kinds of personal and broad range attacks, lest we alienate the fence sitters and make ourselves look unreasonable. We need to FOCUS on the non-morality aspects of our opponents' arguments, which we can easily refute, and which allows us to wage the battle on a field of OUR choosing.

But if you and others just can't help yourself and feel it necessary to blowhard about the nuances of morality because of your personal distaste with and disagreement with the overall positions of FOF and their allies, then go ahead. Just realize that not only are you putting that above what is the best political strategy for engaging our opponents, but also are using a dominated strategy given their political clout relative to ours, and risking dooming our chances. And obviously I am not talking about making random posts here, but on what we should say publicly, and what we should focus our efforts on.