Family Council

A new study confirms what many have been saying for years: Gambling is a serious threat to young people—and the problem seems to be getting worse.

Most states in the U.S. have legalized sports betting, and more than half of men ages 18–49 report having an active sportsbook account online. Arkansans wagered a record $86.5 million in March alone this year. But this type of gambling is having a corrupting influence on athletics in the U.S. and around the world.

Researchers from Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet studied 741 male junior elite soccer players from Sweden’s two highest national leagues.

The study found 32% of the players had gambled in the past year.

Among players 18 and older, that number jumped to more than 60%.

Nearly one in ten players showed signs of problem gambling, and even more alarming, more than one in five underage players reported gambling despite legal age restrictions.

The data is clear: Sports betting is corrupting sports and ruining lives.

The NCAA has opened investigations into dozens of student-athletes for sports betting violations. Federal prosecutors have announced indictments in connection with an alleged bribery and point-shaving scheme to fix college basketball games. Nearly half of Division I men’s basketball players have reported harassment from bettors on social media.

MLB players have been accused of rigging pitches to defraud sports betting platforms. The NFL and the NBA have also dealt with corruption and scandals tied to sports betting.

On the whole, most Americans do not believe sports betting has been good for society or good for sports.

Arkansas families need to understand that sports betting isn’t harmless entertainment—it’s predatory, and it’s growing.

As powerful corporations try to make gambling part of everyday life, it’s important for Arkansas to protect its citizens and families from predatory gambling. Otherwise, gambling addiction will simply continue wrecking lives and hurting families in our state.

Disney Adults are an example of the new festivals, games, and liturgies invented to give life meaning without God.

In 1882, Friedrich Nietzsche famously proclaimed “God is dead” in The Parable of the Madman. In it, Nietzsche warned that the modern zeal to rid the world of the divine would not turn out the way that the skeptics and utopianists hoped. In fact, the deed of killing God, Nietszche wrote, was far beyond what they imagined.

. . how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun?

Then, Nietzsche asked:

How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?

As far-seeing as he was, it is unlikely Nietzsche could have guessed all the ways this prediction would play out. John Calvin called the human heart a “factory of idols,” and our creativity in inventing “festivals of atonement” and “sacred games” knows no limits.

For example, a recent essay in The New Yorker described the rise of “Disney Adults,” who take multiple trips to the various parks each year, even taking on serious debt to do so. One young woman who was described in the article spent over $15,000 on six park visits in two years. That’s why, author Amelia Tate wrote,

So-called Disney adults have become a subject of online fascination, with many people now questioning how much it costs to be one. … It’s a genre of content that has become more popular, recently, with critics seizing on it as evidence that the Disney-obsessed are not only culturally but financially bankrupt.

Of course, Americans spend a lot of money on vacation, with many wanting to visit the same place over and over each year. But that is not what drives Disney adults. According to a pop-culture historian quoted in a New York Post article about Disney adults, the parks are “very appealing to childless adults who’re looking for a way to recapture or keep alive that feeling of delight and comfort.” One woman told The New Yorker, “It’s the nostalgic feeling of what brought you joy when you were little and you didn’t have the stressors of adult life.”

Anyone who has visited a Disney park can attest to remarkable attention to detail in creating an alternative world. The safety, cleanliness, rides, and even the smells are perfectly calibrated to produce an experience that is unmatched. One can walk through the gates and step back into childhood, and that’s nice sometimes.

And Disney is not even close to being the only way people seek meaning and fulfillment. From youth sports to fast cars to carefully built social media platforms to politics, humans can turn virtually anything into a focus of worship. What we live for become our gods. The practices we build to honor these things become our religion. And, as the Psalmist said, we will see ourselves in the image of whatever it is we worship.

The yearning of Disney adults is just one example of the new festivals, games, and liturgies invented to give life meaning without God. But in the end, even the good things of this world are only vanity, if not built on what is ultimately true and good.

Like all human beings with eternity in their hearts, Disney adults are creatures of longing. They may not know it, but nostalgia will not fill the God-shaped hole in their hearts. Neither will a scholarship or a Lexus or a million new followers. C.S. Lewis once wrote, “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.” Indeed, but Disney parks, though fun places to visit (at least on days that are not too hot or crowded), is not the world for which we were made.

Even the most committed and indebted Disney adults aren’t necessarily crazy. But they are looking for God in the wrong place. Better instead to listen to St. Augustine, who, after many different attempts to fill his own longing, concluded: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”

Copyright 2026 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint .org with permission.

Leaders are calling for congressional inquiries following accusations of fraud by the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

The SPLC has spent decades opposing white supremacy while also branding Christian organizations like Family Research Council and Focus on the Family as “hate groups” on par with Neo-Nazis and the K*K.

The organization has also urged financial institutions to de-bank conservatives.

But last month an indictment from a federal Grand Jury said the SPLC has secretly funneled more than $3 million to a covert network of informants affiliated with groups like the Ku Klux Klan.

According to the indictment, the SPLC laundered donations through fictitious companies to people in the very groups the SPLC claimed it was working to dismantle. In some cases, the SPLC allegedly gave money to individuals listed on its “extremist” website.

On May 20, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins testified before the House Judiciary Committee in a hearing titled ‘The Southern Poverty Law Center: Manufacturing Hate.’ The hearing examined the role SPLC has played in “distorting civil rights policy in recent years” — and the real-world consequences that followed.

Perkins testified that in August of 2012, a gunman entered FRC’s Washington, D.C., headquarters carrying a pistol and fifty rounds of ammunition. The attack was thwarted by a building manager who was seriously in the process.

The gunman later confessed to investigators that he selected FRC because of the SPLC’s website listing Family Research Council as a “hate group.” The attack cost FRC more than $6 million in security-related expenses.

Perkins also testified that around 2016, the SPLC began pressuring financial companies and tech platforms to deplatform and defund organizations it had labeled extremist.

Arkansas families and churches should pay close attention to this hearing. The SPLC’s “hate group” list isn’t trustworthy. Congress and federal officials are finally saying so out loud. Arkansans should encourage their representatives to support a full and thorough investigation—one that follows every spoke on that wheel.

The Wall Street Journal reports two U.S. Senators are working on a bipartisan effort to protect children from gambling ads.

Sports betting and other forms of gambling are now legal across most of the U.S., and more than half of men ages 18–49 report having an active sportsbook account online. Arkansans wagered a record $86.5 million in March alone this year. But evidence shows teens and young adults may be getting hooked on sports betting through predatory advertisements.

The proposed Gaming Advertisement to Minors Enforcement (GAME) Act by U.S. Sens. Katie Britt (R – Alabama) and Richard Blumenthal (D – Connecticut) would prohibit social media platforms and other websites from advertising sports betting to children and teens.

We have written in the past how some sportsbooks have actually produced ads that seem to promote compulsive gambling and other problem-gambling behavior.

For example, in 2024, FanDuel released one commercial that showed people so focused on sports betting that they ignored everyone else around them.

Another ad promoted taking advantage of every opportunity to gamble.

Last year, FanDuel aired commercials encouraging people to gamble on “surprising” hunches — including powerful hunches that strike between football plays.

More recent commercials advertise “playoff mode” with aggressive promotional offers like hundreds of dollars in “bonus bets.”

The ads may seem silly, but gamblers who ignore loved ones, wager nonstop, or place bets “on a hunch” quite possibly suffer from a gambling problem.

We have said before that placing reasonable restrictions on advertising is one thing Arkansas could do to address predatory gambling. It’s good to see congressional leaders taking this issue seriously as well.

Sports betting is corrupting sports and ruining lives. The NFL and sportsbooks have actually faced lawsuits over the harm from gambling addiction and in-game micro-bets.

As powerful corporations try to make gambling part of everyday life, it’s important for policymakers to protect its citizens and families from predatory gambling. Otherwise gambling addiction will simply continue wrecking lives and hurting families in our state.

The Arkansas Legislative Council’s Administrative Rules Subcommittee could vote on a proposed set of Educational Freedom Account (EFA) rules at its June 15 meeting at 1:30 P.M. in Little Rock.

Arkansans who want to make their voices heard on these rules should contact their lawmakers as soon as possible.

Arkansas created the EFA program in 2023, making it possible for students to use public funds to pay for an education at a public or private school or at home. Thousands of homeschool students have taken advantage of this great program.

But the Arkansas Department of Education has approved new administrative rules restricting how EFA funds can be spent on extracurricular activities, establishing complicated pre-approval and reimbursement requirements for EFA funds, and reducing the maximum balance families can carry in their EFA accounts.

Our team has put together a brief overview explaining some of the problems with the new rules. You can download it here.

We are urging everyone to talk to their lawmakers between now and June 15, and ask them to make sure the new EFA rules track with state law and are fair to homeschool families.

Arkansans can look up contact information for their senator and representative using the Arkansas Senate and Arkansas House websites.

In March, with an 8-1 majority vote, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that “counseling conversations are speech and that states cannot silence viewpoints in the counseling room.” The majority included all but Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who claimed in dissent that states should be able to use “police powers to establish and enforce the standards of care that bind medical professionals,” including what she called “professional medical speech.” Apparently, for Justice Jackson, that power also includes the ability to determine what should count as “scientific consensus,” given the collapse of consensus on the issue of “gender-affirming care.”

In a concurring opinion, liberal Justices Kagan and Sotomayor noted that the Colorado law in question, which banned conversion therapy for minors, was not “viewpoint-neutral.” Had it been, they said, it would raise a different and more difficult question.” In another instance last summer, Justice Sotomayor did not agree with a Trump administration policy but also believed it was not the place of the Court to decide. Justice Jackson, on the other hand, described her appointment to the Supreme Court as an opportunity “to tell people in my opinions how I feel about the issues.”

This is an example of an ongoing fissure between liberals and progressives on the political and ideological Left in America. As Colson Center Senior Fellow Dr. Glenn Sunshine has previously described, part of this difference is that standpoint epistemology, the liberal idea that each has our own truth from our own perspective, has devolved into expressive individualism, the idea that “our truth” should be imposed on everyone else as a matter of human dignity.

The implications of this shift from “liberalism” to “progressivism” are significant, especially for rights of speech and conscience. On April 22, Lois McLatchie Miller posted a clip of a British police officer informing a street preacher that he could not share the Gospel in places or ways that “may” cause offense or dissuade people from seeking abortions.

Back in March, Päivi Räsänen, a lawmaker in Finland, was found guilty of “inciting hatred” for calling homosexuality a “disorder” in 2004. No riots or hatred were actually incited in the over twenty years since. She was guilty of believing and expressing the wrong things. Also in March, the Chicago Bulls waived guard Jaden Ivey “due to conduct detrimental to the team.” Given the conduct regularly tolerated by sports franchises, it is notable that Mr. Ivey’s “offense” was posting a video of himself critiquing the NBA’s promotion of “Pride Month.”

Many progressives left Twitter when it was purchased by Elon Musk, not because their ideas would be suppressed but because contrary ideas would not be. But the move to alternate social media platform Bluesky has turned out to be a mess. The progressive drive for ideological purity has stunted any real conversation. As biologist Colin Wright noted:

I’m blocked by thousands of accounts on Bluesky I’ve never even interacted with, since I almost never post. People over there block on first contact with any ideological friction. That results in a bunch of small isolated communities. Not ideal for a social media app.

This kind of intolerance is a feature of progressivism, not a bug. Though people often use “liberal” and “progressive” interchangeably, they are not the same thing. Like the new “dissident Right,” which devolved out of classic conservatism and rejected core tenets of it, progressivism and liberalism are not the same either.

Liberalism calls for tolerance. Progressivism silences dissent and calls it tolerance. Progressivism claims to be about moving forward, but “forward” is just a rejection of anything old, traditional, and settled. To modern progressives, progress is transgression. They sense the world is not as it should be but are threatened by the idea that there is a way it should be.

Divorced from reality and reason, compliance with this vision cannot be argued. Rather, it must be enforced. Thus, the shift from “encouraging all viewpoints” to punishing all dissent.

Copyright 2026 by the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. Reprinted from BreakPoint .org with permission.

Concerns are growing nationwide about a new wave of gambling addiction from sports betting and online “prediction markets.”

Most states have legalized sports betting. Survey data shows more than half of men ages 18 – 49 have an active sportsbook account online.

Arkansans wagered a record $86.5 million in March alone this year, and “prediction markets” that operate outside the scope of state regulation have exploded in recent years.

But people are deeply concerned about the toll this type of gambling is taking on gamblers and their families.

In Ohio, Crain’s Cleveland Business writes that sports gambling is costing more than just money, saying:

“More than three years after Ohio launched legal sports betting, the returns are easy to measure. So are the costs. Billions of dollars have flowed through mobile apps, fueling tax revenue and industry growth. At the same time, calls to problem gambling hotlines have climbed, betting-related debt has increased and some lawmakers are now trying to put new limits on an industry that has already taken hold.”

Over at NBC Sports, Mike Florio recently wrote that sports leagues need to take responsibility for the “new wave of gambling addictions” foisted on fans.

“Those addictions are a direct result of the fact that it’s now as easy to make a bet as it is to send a text. The broader moral and ethical issues have taken a back seat to the rush for cash. For the leagues that have been finding ways to horn in on the treasure chest, it’s impossible to wash their hands of responsibility for the damage done by addiction.”

In Canada, a recent poll found 69% of people surveyed “believe problem gambling will increase as sports betting becomes more widely available and heavily advertised.”

Experts are also sounding the alarm over “prediction markets” that they say are not regulated under state gambling laws, but are still just as addictive as other forms of online gambling.

We have written over and over about how mobile gambling apps use addictive technology to hook people — especially young adults.

In 2024, the Arkansas Problem Gambling Council announced a 22% increase in calls for help with problem gambling — driven largely by sports betting.

By some counts, 20 year-old males account for approximately 40% of calls to gambling addiction hotlines, and upwards of 20 million men are in debt or have been in debt as a result of sports betting.

A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that states with legal mobile sports betting have seen credit delinquency rates spike — especially among borrowers under 40.

Bankruptcy attorneys across the country say online sports betting is driving a surge in personal bankruptcies — especially among young men in their 20s and 30s — and researchers at UCLA estimate that online sportsbooks are linked to an increase of roughly 30,000 more bankruptcies per year nationwide.

Sports betting is out of control. It’s corrupting sports and ruining lives.

Sports betting isn’t harmless entertainment — it’s predatory, and it’s growing. As powerful corporations try to make gambling part of everyday life, it’s important for Arkansas to protect its citizens and families from predatory gambling.

We have identified a few examples of simple, sensible steps that Arkansas and other states could take to protect families from predatory sports betting.

Policymakers need to address this issue. Otherwise, gambling addiction will simply continue wrecking lives and hurting families.

A new investigation shows Chinese birth tourism centers are operating on U.S. soil — and the problem may be bigger than most Americans realize.

We have written repeatedly how commercial surrogacy laws in the U.S. make it possible for corporations and wealthy couples pay women thousands of dollars to carry children for them, and news outlets report Chinese nationals are exploiting America’s largely unregulated surrogacy industry to acquire children born in the U.S. with U.S. citizenship. But concerns over “birth tourism” are growing in other ways.

The Daily Wire recently visited several homes in Houston that the State of Texas says are helping Chinese nationals travel to the U.S. on tourist visas “for the sole purpose of giving birth.” The homes are tied to a birthing center that has allegedly facilitated the births of more than 1,000 American-born babies who are then taken back to China. Because the children are born on U.S. soil, they receive birthright citizenship — even though the parents intend to raise the children in China.

This is not a small or isolated problem. Peter Schweizer, President of the Government Accountability Institute, testified before the U.S. Senate in March that between 750,000 and 1.5 million Chinese babies have been born in the U.S. specifically to obtain American citizenship — with the intention of being raised in China. In his testimony, Schweizer said:

"These individuals grow up in China, often educated in CCP-controlled schools with distorted views of U.S. history, values, and culture. They have no lived connection or demonstrated allegiance to our country, yet they possess full rights as U.S. citizens: the ability to vote in elections, relocate here at will, and—upon turning 21—sponsor their parents as permanent residents."

In his testimony, Schweizer also pointed out how some birth tourism is carried out by people traveling to the U.S. on tourist visas while other birth tourism is committed by hiring commercial surrogates to bear children in the U.S.

Birth tourism wrongly exploits birthright citizenship, which is a legal principle meant to protect people born in the U.S. When it’s done in conjunction with commercial surrogacy, it also demeans women and children.

Social commentators and policymakers worldwide have raised concerns about how commercial surrogacy financially pressures women into providing children for paying customers.

Commercial surrogacy deliberately deprives children of their biological mothers or fathers.

It treats pregnancy like a “service” that can be purchased.

It treats women like commodities, and it treats children like products that can be made to order and sold for profit.

Commercial surrogacy also relies heavily on in vitro fertilization and other reproductive technologies that have serious problems of their own.

That’s part of the reason Family Council has opposed commercial surrogacy in Arkansas.

Human beings are not products that can be made to order, bought, or sold. Our laws need to respect that fact. Policymakers should take steps to address commercial surrogacy and “birth tourism” in America.