On that and more, I agree completely. However, you are not mandated by the government to go buy lottery tickets. Parents are, however, mandated by the government to send their kids to school. You are free to gamble or not gamble. Parents are not free to choose whether they send their children to school or not. They must send them and if the state changes the rules such that some aspect of its schools are unacceptable, parents are forced to take on the expense of educating their children while still paying onerous taxes to educate everyone else's children as well. Sounds pretty unfair to me and counter to the principles of freedom.
You may find it "silly" that one individual's desire to purchase a lottery ticket is comparable to another's desire to choose particular avenues of education.
What I find silly is your insistence that you have some right to play the lottery. You have a number of rights granted by your creator, none of which includes a right to be entertained. What I find silly is your insistence that your perceived right to be entertained trumps a categorical right of parents to raise their children in a manner consistent with their beliefs and values.
Freedom does not mean you have the right to impinge on others, exactly the point Mr. Hood makes. So the whole issue of whose freedom is being impinged by the lottery depends on where you stand. For most people, the ability of one to purchase a lottery ticket is trivial when compared to any aspect of child-rearing. But as Mr. Locke has pointed out, freedom is not subject to the whims of the majority.
Let's take this paragraph for right now. Where is it written that your rights are so limited? What gives you the impression that rights to be entertained, as you put it, are not protected? We all have the right to enjoy the fruits of our labor. If I work for money, I have every right to spend it on anything I choose. No one, and no supernatural being can dictate to a sovereign individual how he or she spends their money, nor list the proper and improper ways it can be spent. Which part of rights to life, liberty and property don't you understand?
First of all, no government should force parents to send their children to a public school. Nonetheless, if there is such legislation, and there are parents who have moral disagreements about the way public schools are funded and at the same time cannot afford private education, they have no business complaining if they still choose to bring children into this world under those circumstances.
...if the state changes the rules such that some aspect of its schools are unacceptable, parents are forced to take on the expense of educating their children...
Here is where I cannot seem to get my point across to you. The expenses of educating children should be prepared for, allocated, and ready to be dispensed by every American BEFORE THE DECIDE TO HAVE CHILDREN. If they cannot afford such provisions, then they have no leg to stand on if they have moral disputes with the funding of public schools that they willingly participate in by having kids they cannot afford.
"...while still paying onerous taxes to educate everyone else's children as well. Sounds pretty unfair to me and counter to the principles of freedom."
We can get into whether or not people who do not have children in public schools should have to pay for them with their taxes. On that issue, and the question of the validity of public schools in the first place, I suspect we may actually agree. But it sounds like you and I will go to our graves on our opposing definitions of freedom. If you believe freedom means subjecting everyone who benefits from the subsidies generated by state lotteries to the moral convictions of the very few, then God bless you, but I fear for the state of our country. And there is little value in arguing this point further.