Homosexuality is a sin? Well, Xtians, what about these other 76 things?

[festive1]

LOL!!
Show of hands: Who wants to give up the modern world and go live in Ancient Rome? "Not I," said the little red hen...

i think you missed the point I was making about the last reigning generation of the Roman Empire. The declining social immorality of rome is often considered one of the top five reasons the empire fell. I was simply trying to draw a parallel between the last most corrupt generation of Romans who let 1000 year empire fall around them because their allegiance to their personal perversions took precedent over maintaining their country, to those of us who would ignore the roots and principles this country was founded upon, to force their preferred "freedoms" onto everyone else, and demand acceptance even if it means the foundations of this country are damaged beyond repair forcing the whole country to repeat the same mistakes that were made in Ancient Rome. I truly do not wish to live in any part of Ancient Rome, but it seems you and yours are determined to have us live there with the acceptions of mod/cons.

It's pretty obvious that modern US culture is, in many ways, more moral than Ancient Roman culture. We don't send political prisoners or prisoners of war to fight hungry, wild beasts in an attempt to entertain the masses. We don't have slavery, though the system of slavery in Ancient Rome was a "gentler" form than the slavery that was practiced in the US (slavery wasn't always hereditary, slaves could marry, slaves could buy their freedom, slaves could be educated, all of which were not allowed under the US system).

The big thing that led to the fall of ancient Rome was the upper, ruling classes didn't pay attention and dismissed the power of the masses. They didn't seem to grasp that if you keep a large majority of your citizenship in desperate, impoverished conditions, they will eventually rise up and depose you. To this end, yes, we in the US need to address the number of people we have in this country who live in poverty, which is still no where near the numbers of people living in poverty in Ancient Rome. We need to help lift the poor out of their poverty, which is largely due to no fault of their own, rather an outgrowth of the conditions they were born into, not from lack of motivation or hard work on their part (not in most cases anyway).
This is (partly) why I consider myself a socialist. If a revolution ever comes to America, my money's on the greedy, capitalist pigs of Wall Street and corporate America being the first group to go.