well

not really

but, whatever, dude, whatever

English is a language by which we communicate our ideas

which part of my post were you incapable of understanding?

Seriously...

did I miss garysher's answer to this?

I see him posting about gay stuff on the other threads ... maybe he missed a question in response to his post because it's not specifically about anything gay?

I must have missed the part where an internet message board was supposed to be a serious literary outlet.

I like Billy Mays and think he's a effective salesperson and not that bad looking... nor are you... but please don't call me dude. It took me months to break my son from using dude and I really find it annoying... every time he used it in front of me (especially in front of his friends) I'd call him dudette. For a while dude to him was like MFer is to some black folks if you know what I mean?

When I used hair color and beard color it was because I liked the young girls to still look... why do you? My wife at the time was 13 years younger than me and to be honest it was her idea, what's your reason?

but, whatever, whatever...

wierd thread this one, but hey.

it started with a post about the decline of morality and increasing promiscurity in an article from 2008.

later if was filled with various details about american immorality and promiscurity in vietnam. in the 60s and 70s.

so i guess things were pretty bad 30-40 years ago. have they declined since ? given how bad they were in the 70s i guess america is back in the stone age by now.

there has been a lot written about the decline of morality and inevitable decay of civilization. i have seen it written from the 19th century, the early 20th century and today. i guess we had such a long way to fall from the moral heights of the middle ages (where we had slaves, female oppression, genocide, etc) to the immoral world we live in now (with a universal declaration of human rights, free press, free speech, votes, and all that).

or perhaps the doomsayers are not always right.

Or since the OP mentioned the criteria that it was using, slavery and genocide and female oppression aren't included.
Kids born out of wedlock to poor, uneducated, unprepared parent(s) is a cycle that results in more poor uneducated unprepared parents and eventually will lead to a decline in a society. Slavery, or free labor, while unjust from a moral standpoint, wouldn't necessarily do the same. The same for female oppression. Many species on the planet have some system where females are herded and "kept" by a male. They seem to get along just fine.

Sometimes what we think is making our lives "better", may contribute to its demise. Lots of our work saving technology comes to mind. Even the instantaneous aspects of the media has a detrimental side to it.