The Presiding Bishop of the Methodist Church of Ghana, Rev. Dr. Robert Aboagye-Mensah has called for stringent measures to ban striptease and other immoral acts before they get out of hand in Ghana.

"As a nation, we should encourage people to see that, this kind of thing would not help us and therefore, we should find legal ways to guide people in our country, as well as in other places to live decently."

Rev. Dr. Aboagye-Mensah was speaking to ADM after the launch of a youth prgrograme in Accra last week. He was not very impressed with the decadence he sees creeping into the Ghanaian social/moral fabric. He lamented: "For someone just to go and stand before men or women and take off their things until they are naked and receive money or applause for that, I don't think that is the right way in which we should live our lives."

Striptease dancing, a regular fare of nightclub life in major cities around the world, is equally popular in some night clubs in Accra. The services of young ladies who are daring, willing and hungry enough for money are in much demand to undress to entertain audiences in Accra's brave new nightlife.

Ghanaians, it seems, have also arrived in the permissive society of sex, booze and drugs. A pornographic website advertising uniquely Ghanaian blue films has been up and running these past few weeks and receiving many hits.

The Bishop called on Ghanaians, especially, those in authority to address this and other moral issues that are gradually taking root in the country.

He questioned the moral value of ladies who allow themselves to be used for such acts: "If people have a lot of value for themselves, and see themselves as people of worth, they would not empty themselves like that before other people."

He said: "If we allow an immoral base, where our young people are attracted to money and therefore prepared to sell their bodies, then the future of this nation is gloomy".

He said morality and religion are very important in human life especially during the growing up stage of an individual's life.

He noted that morality belongs to everyday experience, which keeps society stable and a society without moral values would disintegrate.

Rev. Aboagye-Mensah described morality as a kind of social glue that keeps society sufficiently intact. "When the glue is taken off, then the society would show a sign of disintegration".

He bemoaned the state of affairs in which the youth have failed to respect and recognize the cultural values that have held the society together for years and instead are adopting strange values into the society which are scraping off the "glue that binds us together".

"If you study why societies have collapsed and empires have collapsed, whether it is Alexander the Great and Greece or Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire, you would find that it is because the moral base of the nation or empire has been weak "

He chastised some political leaders for failing to live lives worth emulating. "One of the saddest things that I feel in my heart and bones is that, some of our political leaders are not leaving us a proper legacy of how to speak with respect to people democracy does not mean you should stand up and insult people."