What's a sign that your culture is nearing its twilight years?

Anthony Esolen over at Mere Comments has begun a series of entries to that blog defending traditional marriage, but his reasons for his defense, as he clarifies it, do not come from his religious convictions:

Most people believe that the principal objections, or even the only objections, to the drive to legalize homosexual “marriage” spring from religious faith. But that is simply not true. Beginning with this post I'll offer ten objections that have nothing to do with any religion at all, except insofar as the great religions of the world happen to reflect the nature of mankind. These objections spring from three sources.

Those three sources are the common sense observation of man, a consideration of history, and logic. He posts his first two objections today, which are 1) The legalization of homosexual “marriages” would enshrine the sexual revolution in law; and 2) [The legalization of homosexual marriage] would, in particular, enshrine in law the principle that sexual intercourse is a matter of personal fulfillment, with which the society has nothing to do.

Esolen teaches English at Providence College and his literary and erudite observations are needed in this fight against the dissolution of marriage and our culture. As Esolen says:

Some people reckon up the losses from this [sexual] revolution in terms of percentages: of unwed mothers, of aborted pregnancies, of children growing up without a parent, usually the father. It will take artists of the most penetrating insight to reckon up the losses as they ought to be reckoned, in human misery.