"History tells us that any society that continues in the direction ours is going will eventually fall." Hasn't it already fallen? Didn't you notice? In the past there never was a huge network established that came to have but a single aim - anaesthetise the population, dumb them down and make them all good little consumers. Small movements could gather momentum and correct imbalances by both example and teaching - now the population seems addicted to a diet of the most tacky and undemanding swill flooding into its' living rooms through the mechanical cyclops that lives in a special place of honour. Small movements cannot gather any momentum now. The will of the people has been disastrously sapped. They are so innured to seeing death and destruction in their own homes - why should they worry about it happening anywhere else? Education has to be introduced into our schools. Discipline has to be introduced into our homes. Families have to be created. Most of all - a personal sense of worth has to be engendered in our young people. They are the future but they have no good strong past to build on. It all has to start from scratch.

Hi Art, Hi Dave, Hi Forumites, I can't really dispute much of what has been said here. I have a bit to add... Moral decline is well and truly entrenched over here in Australia too. No-one gives a jack about anybody else any more. You can quickly see that by the way that most people drive their vehicles. Or the total CRAP that is dished up on TV as entertainment - rubbish like "Big Brother" and "the L word" and other contrived garbage. There is now only one God - MONEY! I guess western society has reached a lowly level all over the world. I'll probably get smashed for saying this next bit but I'm gonna say it anyway (coz I really don't care if the thought police come after me)... when you can allow depraved processions like the so-called "GAY mardi-gras" to exhibit itself through our capital cities then you know that society is in big trouble. If any "normal" man or woman thrashed about exposing their backsides or breasts on a float in the name of sexual liberation then they would be arrested. A family is not two homosexuals and a dog or two lesbians and a test tube full of semen. That is an alternate lifestyle that should remain private - NOT being promoted to kindergarten kids as perfectly normal by the ever pushy lobbyists for these lifestyles - NOT in my opinion anyway. In my opinion a family is a mum, a dad, one or more children and maybe a dog or a cat. I believe in the concept of Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve - or Eve and Genevieve. There! Sorry if I have offended anybody but that is what I think. Gary

Hi Gary, No offense taken. However, you should realize that here in Canada, what you are publicly stating is now illegal. Gay marriage IS legal, the Gay Pride parade is now one of the biggest events of the year in major Canadian cities, and just like in Australia, the lifestyle is heavily promoted to kids. I personally find it very offensive that this "alternate" lifestyle is now being taught as a normal, mainstream lifestyle to kids as young as kindergarten age. Sex education is NOT taught to kids until much later, yet it's perfectly fine to teach them this. Hmmmm. Also, in Canada, the age of consent is 14, girls can get an abortion without their parents' consent or knowledge as young as 14, yet a 14 year old cannot be charged as an adult for a crime, as they are considered too young to be held responsible! Where are we headed? Will older adults eventually be able to marry young children? The question comes down to this: who decides what is moral, good and proper? In a society that has largely accepted evolution starting from a big accident many billions of years ago with no cause but many fortuitous accidents along the way to keep it going, how is morality and truth decided? Where is the yardstick to measure how far we go in any direction? If we are here by accident, then it is up to the majority to determine what is true and what is moral. If society has determined that what was immoral yesterday is now wholesome and good today, if there is no eternal truth and morality, then who can deny what the majority has determined? One of the lines that we hear today is that "what was true yesterday is not necessarily true today." It is a widely accepted statement that implies that there really IS no truth, just what we, as a society, choose to believe today. The hopeless foolishness of that idea is in the very fact that it's a hopeless paradox. It is, by the very nature of the statement, completely false. If there is truth, there must be a source; if there's a source, it must be absolute and eternal; if it's absolute and eternal, we better pay attention and start living according to that truth, or our society is going to fall. God bless, Dave

Hi, Dave, There you go again - our society is going to fall - TOO LATE! It did already. While I can accept the extreme distatse homosexual relationships can cause in the heterosexual community, I do not understand it. Because of two programmes that I was once very active in, I have a great many homosexual clients and friends. They are no different to us. They just want to live what is, for them, a perfectly normal and respectable life. Forget about the Gay Priders - I am convinced that their shows are simply an effort for them to come to termsd with their sexuality - maybe they are trying to convince themselves because they have no strict leanings either way. Being a homosexual must be very much the same as being heterosexual. It comes with the rest of us when we are born. It isn't a matter of choice and, just as many heterosexuals do not go around all day wishing they were homosexual, homosexuals do not spend much of their time wishing they were heterosexual. We are what we are. It is estimated that 13% of society is homosexual. This means that there are probably many of them in your area that you know personally but, just as you don't bost 'Hey. I'm heterosexual!' they don't bost 'Hey. I'm homosexual!' (well, not many, any way). Homosexuals aren't the problem. The problem is the brain dead, moronic, monosylabic product of our education and entertainment systems.

Hi Dave, You said: =========== "Where are we headed? Will older adults eventually be able to marry young children?" =========== Well, several years ago I was listening to a local radio station where the talk back callers were discussing pedophilia. One disgusting individual came on and said, sneeringly: "Don't condemn it until you try it." The way society is heading I think that we will see some time in the next 20 years that this will be tolerated just like all the other depravity. I hope not. But I fear this will be the case. Who would have thought 20 years ago that men and women would be able to expose their genitals in a public display of their so-called "freedom of sexuality?" By the way: Does anybody else find these new pop-up comments at Adland annoying? This is another thing that I am finding annoys me. If there was an X that you could click to give them the flick then it wouldn't be so bad but you just have to wait for them to go away. Gary