The RECORD

By Steve Whiting, esq.

The following guest column ran in a December edition of the Portland Press Herald. It is authored by No Slots for Maine board member Steve Whiting.

Over the past few weeks, there has been a profusion of stories and editorials, appearing in both the press and the broadcast media, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the opening of Hollywood Slots in Bangor. Many of these stories have repeated the gambling interests' claims that the Hollywood Slots operation has made more money and spurred less crime than expected. Digging a little deeper shows otherwise.

First look at expected revenues. In April 2004, six months before the Bangor facility opened, it was projected by the developers that the total amount of money bet would reach $825 million per year, and that 90% of bets would be returned as winnings to the bettors. Thus the net gambling revenue (meaning the net losses by gamblers) that was expected by the developers prior to the operation of the facility was 10% of $825 million, or $82.5 million per year. That figure is fully consistent with betting behavior in other parts of the country.

The projected revenue of $82.5 million per year works out to $6.9 million per month. In the first twelve months, the net revenue of Hollywood Slots has risen to around $3.45 million per month, exactly half of the $6.9 million projected. Thus the first year's revenue experience at Bangor does not even come close to "beating expectations."

Similarly, the early crime data also comes as no surprise to those who follow this subject. Economists Earl Grinols and David Mustard, for example, have conducted an impressive study of the impact of casino construction on crime rates on a county-by-county basis throughout the country. They report there is no major impact on crime in the first year or two of operation.

However, after that initial quiet period, the situation deteriorates badly, with a steady rise observed, especially in property-related crimes. They found the rate of robberies in an average casino county rises from 100 robberies in a given time period before the opening of a casino up to 236 robberies in a corresponding time period five years after opening.

There are two main reasons for this delayed impact. First, the bettors themselves change with time. Psychologist Robert Breen has found that personality changes associated with the onset of gambling addiction take a year or more to fully develop. Secondly, most gamblers have access to a certain amount of wealth, such as retirement savings or the equity in their home. It would take even a truly dedicated gambler some time to lose, let's say, $150,000 at his favorite slot machine. It is only after an addicted gambler exhausts his own financial resources that he is likely to turn to crime to support his habit.

Over the next year or so of racino operation, full-blown gambling addiction will manifest itself in many of the racino's clients. Studies referenced on the No Slots for ME! web site have found that gambling addiction typically accounts for 40% of casino income. This means, for one thing, that we can expect to see further increases in monthly revenues, probably to a number very close to the $6.9 million projection.

But revenue gains coming from rising rates of addiction is a losing proposition for the people of Maine. Economists Grinols and Mustard have found that the financial cost of casino gambling to society just about matches, dollar for dollar, gambling revenues. Most of these costs originate in the out-of-control behavior of addicted gamblers, and the financial burden that this behavior places on their families, their employers, the police, the courts, and the penal system.

The first year's experience at Hollywood Slots does show us something, after all. What we have learned is that Mainers are just as vulnerable to the treacherous allure of slot machines as people in other parts of the county. All Mainers, including those who don't gamble, will get the bill for the large social costs that this vulnerability implies.

Maine Campus Braces for Annual Homosexual Drag Show

The University of Maine at Farmington is known nationally for its annual ranking among the best small liberal arts colleges in America, according to U.S. News and World Reports. UMF is known locally as a hotbed of radical homosexual activism, led by the college's homosexual Alliance student organization.

UMF will host the homosexual students group's annual Drag Show on campus on Thursday, April 26th at 9 pm with free admission for those who attend. The Alliance's co-chairman, Andrea Bechen, states in the March 26, 2007 edition of the campus Farmington Flyer newspaper, You will see men dressed as women and women dressed as men and other people dressed as genders you may not be certain of. There will be loud music. There will be dancing. There will be overt sexuality. And it is a (obscenity deleted) of a lot of fun. The Drag Show story rated front-page, above-the-fold treatment by the campus paper, written by Farmington Flyer staff writer Shannon Field.
Bechen, a self-described feminist, agnostic lesbian and rabid gay-rights activist, went on to explain in the story, "the Alliance accept(s) sexual minorities like gays, lesbians, bisexuals, pansexuals, asexuals, transgendered individuals and others." Further, Bechen noted, "The Alliance has a pretty progressive political standpoint because queer politics unfortunately still fall on the 'liberal' side of the spectrum."

The story details the University administration's alleged attempt last year to have the radical homosexual group cease their activities during the "Family and Friends Fall Fest Weekend." Bechen states that the group's public radical homosexual activities would not have been well received by the parents of fellow UMF students and that the group is UMF's well-known queer secret.

UMF's Alliance student group was known as the Rainbow Educational Alliance of Diverse Individuals, or READI, until recently. In addition to the annual Drag Show, the group partnered with UMF's Department of Psychology last year to promote a so-called lesbian lunchbox which was a comprehensive program designed to provide workshop participants with the knowledge, skills, and tools necessary to make schools safer and more affirming places for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender students according to a UMF press release no longer available on the University's website.

From the University's website: "Does this sound like you? You're OK with people who have different ideas and values. Our student clubs are proof of that: GLBTQ (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning) Alliance, UMF Democrats, etc. Farmington students are open minded, tolerant and willing to listen to different ways of thinking."
The President of the University of Maine at Farmington is Dr. Theodora J. Kalikow, who insists on being referred to as Theo. Dr. Kalikow is actively engaged with the State Sub-Cabinet for Multicultural Affairs, and she chairs the University of Maine System's Diversity Committee, according to the University's website. She is not married. She can be reached at 778-7056 and by email at kalikow@maine.edu

The Vice President for Student and Community Services, Celeste Branham, states on the University's website. I, too, welcome your questions and the expression of concerns. I am always willing to talk with parents about their sons and daughters... She can be reached at 778-7087 and by email at cbranham@maine.edu

Editor's Note: This column was written in 2005, and refers to an incident that occurred in 2003.

A fourteen-year-old retarded girl was abducted from the Maine Mall and raped two years ago. Three Nigerian immigrants were arrested and charged with gross sexual assault. Newspaper and television coverage was widespread and, this being every parent's nightmare, a lot of people heard about it. Very few, however, know how it finally turned out. I didn't know myself until the girl's mother, Laurie Stanley from Bridgton, called me. She was crying with frustration and asked me to write about it.

The Nigerians got away with it, essentially, and this fact was all but ignored by local media. Charges against Kingsley Nwaturocha were dropped. Dan Eneagu and Okey Chukwurah pled guilty to misdemeanor assault. Eneagu got a suspended sentence and two years probation. Chukwurah got a $1000 fine. That's it. The Portland Press Herald ran a tiny news brief buried in the December 10, 2003 issue, saying: "A Nigerian man accused of raping a 14-year-old Gorham girl in Old Orchard Beach last year has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault charges and has been released after his attorneys said the man would receive a death sentence if deported."

The York County District Attorney's office contacted Laurie Stanley the day before trial to tell her that Eneagu would be killed in Nigeria if he were deported. Is that what you want? A woman from the DA's office asked her over the phone. As mad as I was that they raped my daughter, she said, "I didn't want that." I didn't want them to die. I listened silently. What would you have done?

"If they raped my daughter," I said, "execution would be fine with me."

Semen found in the girl matched Eneagu's DNA. A rape conviction would have been a slam-dunk, yet the DA's office offered a plea bargain on the belief that the men would be deported and executed in Nigeria if convicted of felony rape. That seemed suspicious to me. Checking into it, I discovered that a rape conviction is extremely difficult under Islamic law and it would have been highly unlikely for those men charged with rape in Maine to be accountable there. I called Eneagu's attorney, Nicholas Mahoney, several times to ask where he got his information but he didn't return my calls.

Islamic law, or Sharia, considers a woman's testimony worth only half that of a man's. Robert Spencer, author of Islam Unveiled, wrote in his article Rape in Islam: Blaming the Victim that four Muslim male witnesses are required for a conviction and that without these witnesses and a confession from the accused rapist, the victim will stand condemned by her very accusation: she wasn't raped, so she must be guilty of zina. Zina, under Islamic Law, is sexual activity outside of marriage. In Nigeria, women found guilty of zina are sentenced to death by stoning.

York County Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Moskowitz negotiated Eneagu's plea bargain and I asked him if he verified the defense attorney's execution claim. He told me he called the US Immigration and Naturalization Service, but they had no idea about it. Then, he consulted an immigration lawyer in Portland, who referred him to a Nigerian in Portland whose opinion was that there was a good chance Eneagu would be killed. When I related what I had learned about Islamic law, he said I was comparing apples to oranges because Eneagu would have been deported already convicted, and would not likely be re-tried in Nigeria. When I asked Moskowitz if he thought justice was done, he said he had no regrets about how he handled the case and would do the same thing again.

I called the immigration lawyer Moskowitz talked to, an attorney named George Hepner. He said he didn't have an opinion about Eneagu at the time and referred Moskowitz to Najim Animashaun of South Portland. Animashaun is Muslim, a practicing attorney in Maine. He has also practiced in the UK and in Nigeria. He told me he didn't specifically recall consulting with Moskowitz on the Eneagu case either, although he might have. He said he often discusses hypotheticals concerning certain legal cases and does remember talking to Eneagu's attorney, Nick Mahoney. He told me it was very unlikely Eneagu would have been executed. Eneagu is not a Muslim and Islamic law is only applied to Muslims. He said though Islamic law is practiced only in some parts of Nigeria and death sentences are often made, they're seldom carried out. When I asked why, he said Islamic officials are afraid of executing someone wrongly because they themselves would be accountable in the afterlife if they made a mistake.

Laurie Stanley called me originally, not just because the men were never convicted of rape, but also because she read another tiny news brief in the Portland Press Herald that day last September about Kingsley Nwaturocha against whom the rape charge was dropped. He was granted $95,000 because he claimed to have been beaten by corrections officers at the York County Jail while awaiting trial. I was trying to get my daughter into a residential school to protect her because it was getting to point that I couldn't handle her, Stanley said. I was afraid she might go off with someone like she did at the Maine Mall, but the school wouldn't pay for it and the state wouldn't either. And now he gets all that money. My daughter was raped, bitten, and burned with a cigarette. They gave her herpes. She had to be tested for AIDS. She was robbed of her innocence, and he gets $95,000!

Stanley found an attorney willing to file suit against Nwaturocha, but he discovered that the Nigerian had gotten his payoff three months earlier and moved to Maryland. Believing the money to be gone by then and because it would be difficult to file suit in a state so far away, the attorney dropped the case. Stanley's frustration became unbearable and she wanted the story told. After seeing how everything turned out, she wishes now the men were executed.

My inquiries into this sad case produced as many questions as answers. Why didn't the York County DA's office scrutinize the defense's execution claims more closely? Why didn't they just enforce Maine law instead of worrying about Nigerian law? Why would the local media virtually ignore the plea bargain? Were they afraid of public outrage? Was it overzealous opposition to the death penalty? Why delay reporting the $95,000 settlement for three months? Was it sympathy for immigrants? Whatever it was, two of those men are still here, free to walk among us, and they don't have to register as sex offenders because they were never convicted of rape.

Tom McLaughlin is a teacher and columnist living in Lovell, Maine. Hundreds of his columns have been published in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts newspapers as well as online at familysecuritymatters.com, realclearpolitics.com, freerepublic.com and many other venues. He can be reached on his blog at http://tommclaughlin.blogspot.com/

EqualityMaine Names Leather Fetishist Children's Performer Their "Homosexual of the Year"
Homosexual activist Lewis (Lew) Alessio of Greene, Maine was recently announced by EqualityMaine to be the 2007 recipient of the Cameron Duncan Award. The annual award is the radical homosexual lobbying group's "homosexual of the year" award. The award was presented to Alessio at EqualityMaine's 23rd Annual Awards Banquet on March 10 at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland.

The EqualityMaine press release spoke of Alessio as a homosexual demonstrating extraordinary accomplishment, commitment, and service within the AIDS community and an outstanding leader in Maine's gay community. Lew Alessio is better known in the central Maine community as being the leader of a homosexual men's social club called Just Guys. The Just Guys motto from their website is¦ the new men's social group for men who have sex with men. The group meets at MaineGeneral Health's Green Street location, located immediately adjacent to the Green Street United Methodist Church in Augusta.
Less well known is Alessio's recent past, where he competed, and was named 1st runner up, in a homosexual leather bondage fetishist contest in 2001 in New York City. Alessio placed 1st Runner Up in the homosexual leather bondage "New American Leatherman 2001" according to the homosexual leather bondage fetish website Leatherweb.com. Later that same year, Alessio married his homosexual partner, Jim Shaffer.

Besides being a leather bondage fetishist and leader of a homosexual sex men-only social club, Alessio is also self-employed as part of the theater troupe Actors Theater of Maine. The State of Maine Arts directory website states the theater group charges $500 per performance and caters primarily to children, from pre-kindergarden to 8th grade. Alessio's ˜Actors Theater of Maine troupe stages plays that all use students in the performances along with the professional casts. [The performances] are accompanied by extensive teaching materials, according to the Maine government website.

Additionally, Alessio has been a speaker with the homosexual activist Maine Speakout Project for a number of years. In 2004, he wrote a column promoting homosexual marriages for the Lewiston Sun Journal. The column was later published as part of a newsletter for the group. In the column, Alessio assures readers it is perfectly acceptable and appropriate to allow children to attend a homosexual "wedding" ceremony. If [children] are invited, sure! What a wonderful opportunity to help them understand this historic societal event. Tell [the children] this is new for you, too. Kids are great at helping adults adjust to change.

By Mike Hein

The public policy representative of the Roman Catholic Chancery leveled a serious charge against the Christian Civic League of Maine in Sunday's Maine Sunday Telegram.

The paper reports that the Diocese of Portland (ME) will work with all parties of good will. This Diocese is a member of the pro-abortion and pro-homosexual marriage Maine Council of Churches. While he doesn't claim that the League acted with ill will toward the Chancery, Diocesan Public Affairs Director Marc Mutty claims that the Chancery has found that it is "impossible to work with [the League]." He further states that the League has been "unkind and un-Christian."

"I am saddened by the Chancery's remarks," said League Executive Director Michael Heath. I've worked well with Marc Mutty and the Chancery in the past on issues where we have been able to forge agreement." The League has partnered more than once with the Chancery in both the State House, and in referendum campaigns. The League has been unwavering in its stand against sexual immorality being forced on Mainers, and has called on the Roman Catholic Church to join it in it's stand.

On Saturday, Heath joined 27 Catholic men on a bus trip to the annual Boston Men's Conference. Heath talked briefly with Archbishop Sean O'Malley in the lobby of the Boston Conference Center. He also listened to the leader of the Knights of Columbus and a Cardinal from Africa.

"The Cardinal spoke of family practices in Africa," said Heath. "He said families in Africa don't nurture an awareness of rights, only obligations. I liked that. While I disagree with some of the theology of the Catholic Church, I came away appreciating much of what I saw and heard. I especially enjoyed time spent talking with the Catholic men on the bus, including my good friend Paul Madore."

The leadership of the Roman Catholic Diocese in Maine has adopted a relaxed strategy toward the threat posed by sexual orientation theory. The League has remained steadfast and unwavering in its support of Biblical moral purity.

Heath stated, "We've worked hard to stay close to God and the Bible on all matters related to sexual morality. For this we have been condemned viciously by Maine's institutional leadership. The people of Maine, of course, agree with [the League's] position when they are allowed to fully appreciate it."

Heath lamented the lack of comity that currently exists between the League and the Chancery. He said he sees little likelihood of improvement as long as Mr. Mutty is allowed to launch public attacks against the 110 year-old Christian ministry. The League is merely working politically in the light of the Gospel on matters related to sexual morality, law and politics.

Heath said, "I extended an invitation to Marc Mutty personally to join our Coalition for Marriage at a lunch in 2005. He never responded."

Heath expressed deep disappointment with the Chancery over their support of so-called 'gay rights' in 2005. Their support tipped the scales in favor of sexual orientation theorists, and unleashed an unspeakable evil on our homes.

One young man in Rockland is facing imprisonment now because he was proselytized by confused adults into living with a homosexual identity. He has twice threatened his male lover with a knife. In his second encounter he succeeded in stabbing both him and his father. This man's confusion is made worse by the Chancery's refusal to act and speak with clarity and precision about sexual morality.

"The Bible and the Vatican are clear about sex outside of marriage. The Diocese of Portland (ME) has a duty to be equally clear." said Heath. "Paul the Apostle said homosexuals will spend eternity in hell. And Jesus said it was better to lose an eye than to practice adultery."

Heath has said many times that Maine will fall to same-sex marriage or civil unions unless the Church decides to stop it. The Roman Catholic Church claims almost a quarter million members in Maine. Most Catholics are Democrats. While the Maine Republican Party is somewhat favorable toward traditional morality, the Democratic Party in Maine has been stridently liberal on abortion and homosexuality for decades.