The State of South Carolina, long a hotbed of anti-gambling sentiment, may have finally seen the light.

According to media reports, a bill was introduced into the state legislature Monday that would legalize some forms of gambling in the state.

Specifically, the bill, if it becomes law, would permit social gambling and charity gambling.

Social gambling would include, for example, a group of friends playing poker for real money in one of the friends’ homes, as long as there was no fee to participate in the game and the house took no rake, or cut of each pot.

Charity gambling would include, for example, fund-raising events like raffles, poker tournaments or casino nights run by churches or social clubs.

The bill was introduced by State Senator Glenn McConnell, a Republican from Charleston, who said the state’s centuries-old anti-gambling laws need “a common-sense overhaul.”

The state has a 207-year-old law that bans “any game with cards or dice.”

Technically speaking, the law not only bans gambling games such as poker or craps but also non-gambling board games such as Monopoly, which use dice in the game.=A0

While no one in South Carolina has ever been busted for erecting a hotel on Boardwalk or Marvin Gardens, personal poker games have proven to be a problem.

Last month, five of 20 poker players arrested in a 2006 raid on a home in Mount Pleasant were tried in court and found guilty of illegal gambling, even though a Municipal Court judge agreed with the players’ argument that poker is mostly a game of skill, not luck or chance.

The guilty five were each ordered to pay a $262 fine.

The other 15 involved in the case had earlier copped pleas and paid fines.

(E-mail Tom Somach at tomsomach@yahoo.com.)