In 2023, Ethics Alarms tersely predicted, regarding the full and loving embrace with which professional sports is snuggling up to online gambling, “This will not end well.” Ah, but there’s money to be made….so, for example, Major League Baseball allows Red Sox Hall of Famer David Ortiz to shill for one of the big online betting concerns during local game broadcasts. Not surprisingly, given that it is the most unethical of all sports organizations, the NFL had the first betting scandal under the new gluttony: In 2023, “Isaiah Rodgers and Rashod Berry of the Indianapolis Colts and free agent Demetrius Taylor were suspended indefinitely for betting on NFL games. Tennessee Titans offensive tackle Nicholas Petit-Frere was suspended six games for betting on other sports.
Next came the betting scandal involving baseball’s most famous star, pircher-slugger Shohei Ohtani, whose translator was caught illegally using the star’s name to pay off a bookie. But of course, there was, and is, more to come.
Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter was banned from the NBA after an investigation last year found that Porter tipped off bettors about his health and then claimed illness to exit at least one game, creating wins for anyone who had bet on him to under-perform. Porter also gambled on NBA games in which he didn’t play, and once bet against his own team. Now another NBA player, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, is under investigation. He is suspected of manipulating his game performance “as part of an illegal sports betting scheme”when he was a member of the Charlotte Hornets.
Wait: pro athletes today make millions of dollars. The 1919 Black Sox scandal (Second mention today!) happened because the players involved were being exploited by their team’s owner and were barely able to feed their kids. Why would millionaire jocks ever get involved with gamblers?
Ethics Alarms 
BAD BOB: “I think that’s wrong on it’s face, but if society were to embrace that sort of thing, wouldn’t we have to do away with a few ethical concepts? Loyalty comes to mind, the Golden rule, and I’m sure quite a few others would need definitions changed?”
None of the above. I had the benefit, at 18, of being put in charge of a staff that included a 60 year old grandmother. Gina was weird; proudly Christian, and professionally raided in Guild Wars…. Which isn’t per se a contradiction in terms, but was kind of unique. I loved our conversations.
One of which I remember talking to her about how people, even back then, had sex before marriage, and how she didn’t understand how any relationship could have trust unless two virgins found themselves for the first time.
The answer, to me, was obvious: Why wouldn’t you trust them? Where’s the lie? Now… She was thoughtful enough to lean back and have a think on that, because that’s who she was, and didn’t necessarily like it, or agree with it, but she accepted the truth of it: There’s no betrayal if there’s no lie.
There are cultural differences in play here, and realities that people your age grew up with are fundamentally different now, and it’s hard to wrap your head around them.
Religious beliefs, at least pre-Lutheran, tended to evolve over time to fit the realities of life: At the times the food prohibitions were active, those foods were almost as likely to make you ill as to nourish you, and by the time Jesus told the masses they could suck back pork and shellfish without sin, sanitation improvements had made those foods relatively safe.
We aren’t living in times where humanity or the faith teeters on the brink of extinction from external existential threats. It’s not important, and in fact, it’s probably not great, for the average family to have ten kids anymore. Sex doesn’t carry the risk of pregnancy that it used to. Sexual disease is significantly less common and much more preventable and treatable. I honestly wonder if, had condoms and penicillin been discovered before the printing press, whether the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t have broadly laxed the sex laws.