Gambling for the family

On Mateo's walk today—I'm still walking him in spite of his nefarious breaking of my nose—I passed one of the many charming neighborhood businesses, the Palomar "Casino". It isn't a casino, but just a cardroom, where mostly middle-aged, mostly men spend pretty much their entire days playing poker and pai gow and watching horse-races and sporting events. Given the odds of the things, it is obvious that most of these people are losing money, money that they probably don't have. There just aren't that many people with actually disposable income coming to El Cajon Boulevard to gamble.

Parked right in front of the Palomar Casino was a rather large, red pickup truck, prominently displaying several bumper stickers claiming that California's Prop 8 against same-sex marriage was necessary to save the family. Whatever the merits of that argument, the irony of the person making it spending his day gambling in a crappy little cardroom wasn't lost on me. If you want to save the family, get the fathers of those family's out of the cardrooms and casinos, stop them from gambling and idolizing professional poker players. That's one hell of a lot more serious threat to the family than people of the same sex entering into legally binding contracts to take responsibility for one another off the state's hands.