The Sexual Revolution Has Been an Atrocity

Every civilization has been founded upon the sanctity of the family, upon the bond of man and woman consecrated for the bearing of children. For centuries this truth endured as the foundation of order and continuity. Yet in the twentieth century, the West severed sex from life and enthroned appetite as a false idol. What was proclaimed as progress became in truth a descent into decadence. The Sexual Revolution was not liberation but dissolution, not the elevation of man but his reduction to the most profane impulses.

Its consequences are visible in the wreckage of institutions once thought unshakable. Marriage, the covenant uniting husband and wife for life, has been stripped of its permanence and reduced to a fragile contract. The child, once revered as the blessing of Heaven and the guarantor of a people’s future, is now often treated as a burden to be avoided or discarded. The relation between man and woman, once sanctified by love and oriented toward the generations to come, has been corrupted into a transient exchange of pleasures. In the name of freedom, modernity has severed humanity from the higher order and delivered it into bondage to the lower.

Against this tide, a solitary voice of authority warned of the disaster to come. In 1968 Pope Paul VI issued Humanae Vitae, the encyclical reaffirming the divine law that every conjugal act must remain open to life. He declared that if mankind rejected this order, the result would be infidelity, the degradation of women, the weakening of marriage, and coercion by governments. These warnings were dismissed by the modern world as the relics of a bygone age. Yet as the decades have passed, they have proven prophetic in their precision.

The Sexual Revolution was not a step forward but a descent. It stripped the sacred from love, uprooted the family from its place at the center of civilization, and left nations facing demographic collapse. To call it a mistake is insufficient. It was an atrocity against humanity itself, a rebellion against natural and divine order whose effects still corrode the foundations of our world.

The upheaval of the Sexual Revolution cannot be understood apart from the wider disintegration of Western civilization in the mid-twentieth century. The destruction of two world wars left Europe and America shaken, disillusioned with tradition, and increasingly receptive to ideologies that exalted individual desire above duty. Into this vacuum entered new technologies, new doctrines, and new movements that would alter the most intimate foundations of human life.

Foremost among these was the advent of the contraceptive pill in 1960. For the first time in history, the biological link between sex and reproduction could be severed with near certainty. This invention, heralded as a triumph of science, became the keystone of the new order. By detaching sexual union from procreation, it allowed pleasure to be sought without responsibility, and it rendered children a matter of choice rather than destiny. What had once been regarded as the sacred fruit of conjugal love became a negotiable option.

The revolution was further propelled by the rise of second-wave feminism, which, under the guise of equality, often promoted an antagonism between the sexes. Marriage was reinterpreted as a site of oppression rather than communion, and liberation was defined as the rejection of motherhood in favor of careers and autonomy. The law too bent to the spirit of the age, as no-fault divorce spread rapidly across the West in the 1970s, making the marital covenant dissolvable at will.

The cultural climate of the 1960s, marked by countercultural rebellion, rejection of authority, and the exaltation of the self, provided fertile ground for this transformation. In music, film, and literature, the ideal of restrained love gave way to the glorification of transgression. The Christian vision of sex as sacred was mocked as repressive, and a new creed of unbounded indulgence took its place. It was proclaimed that man would finally be free, unshackled from the traditions of his ancestors and the obligations of his children. In truth, he was entering into a deeper slavery, for to sever sex from its higher purpose is to enthrone instinct as master over reason and soul.

Thus the Sexual Revolution was not an isolated movement but the culmination of technological, ideological, and cultural forces converging in a moment of civilizational weakness. It arose not from strength but from decay, and it bore within itself the seeds of dissolution that would soon blossom in the collapse of family, fidelity, and fertility.

The first and most devastating consequence of the Sexual Revolution was the destruction of the family. For centuries, the household had stood as the basic unit of civilization, the miniature kingdom where husband and wife ruled together in harmony and children were raised as heirs to the community and the faith. When modernity severed sex from its natural end, the foundations of this institution cracked, and the collapse followed swiftly.

The statistics themselves bear witness to the magnitude of the catastrophe. In the United States, divorce rates more than doubled between 1960 and 1980. What had once been rare and shameful became commonplace and acceptable. Marriage was no longer viewed as a covenant sealed before God but as a temporary contract to be dissolved when desire waned. Children who once could trust in the permanence of their parents’ union now found themselves caught between broken homes, burdened with instability that reverberated through their lives.

The revolution also normalized illegitimacy. In 1960, only five percent of American children were born outside of marriage. Today that number has risen above forty percent. A child once born into the sacred shelter of a family now too often enters the world without the protection of a father and without the stability of a home ordered toward the future. The very word “bastardy,” which carried with it the weight of shame, has been erased, yet the reality it described has multiplied.

The extended family, once a chain of continuity binding together generations, has withered under the acid of modern individualism. The grandmother and grandfather, once honored as the custodians of wisdom, are now too often abandoned, their role eclipsed by institutions and care facilities. The lineage, once preserved with pride, is forgotten as men and women pursue their private pleasures without regard for the children who will inherit their name.

The Sexual Revolution replaced permanence with transience, duty with desire, and order with chaos. By striking at the family, it struck at the root of civilization itself, for no society can endure when its most fundamental institution is dismantled. Evola reminds us that tradition is upheld not by abstract principles alone but by the living continuity of blood and spirit passed down within the home. In attacking the family, the revolution did not merely change laws or customs; it attacked the very soul of the West.

If the Sexual Revolution shattered the family, it also corrupted the very fabric of human relationships. Where once intimacy had been bound to permanence, fidelity, and the higher order of love, it was reduced to the exchange of pleasure between individuals with no horizon beyond the present moment. What had been consecrated as sacred union became mere transaction, and in this degradation the nobility of human love was lost.

The normalization of casual sex fostered a culture of impermanence. Men and women, instead of striving toward the lasting communion of marriage, entered into fleeting encounters that dissolved as quickly as they began. The dignity of courtship, with its rituals of patience and commitment, gave way to an economy of immediate gratification. This culture promised freedom, yet it produced instability, mistrust, and alienation. Relationships built upon appetite could not endure when appetite changed, and what was left behind was loneliness.

The revolution also gave rise to the commodification of the human body. In film, advertising, and later in the digital realm, women in particular were presented as objects to be consumed rather than persons to be revered. The very logic of pornography, which grew into a vast industry after the 1960s, transformed sexuality from a sacred mystery into a spectacle of consumption. This objectification did not elevate woman but demeaned her, confirming the prophecy of Humanae Vitae that she would be reduced to an instrument of male desire once sex was severed from its generative and transcendent ends.

The harmony between the sexes, already fragile in a fallen world, was further poisoned by ideologies that taught man and woman to see each other as rivals rather than complements. What had been communion became conflict, and the promise of liberation hardened into mistrust. The noble polarity of masculine and feminine, which in tradition mirrored cosmic principles, was dissolved into a battlefield of competing appetites.

In this climate, the human longing for love and permanence was not extinguished but frustrated. Men and women still sought intimacy, yet they were left unmoored, navigating a landscape where the old landmarks of fidelity, sacrifice, and generational continuity had been demolished. The result has been a generation marked not by freedom but by profound loneliness, where the most basic human bonds have become fragile and uncertain.

No civilization can endure if it ceases to reproduce itself. The Sexual Revolution, by separating sex from procreation and enthroning the pursuit of pleasure above the duty of continuity, has led to the collapse of fertility in the West and in much of the developed world. What was once considered the most natural of human endeavors, the bearing and raising of children, has become an afterthought, delayed indefinitely or abandoned altogether.

The figures speak with an authority that cannot be ignored. In the 1950s, most Western nations maintained fertility rates well above the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman. By the close of the twentieth century, nearly all had fallen below that threshold. Today, countries that once projected confidence in their growth face shrinking populations and aging citizenries. Japan, Italy, and Spain stand as stark warnings of what awaits when a civilization no longer produces heirs. The United States, once thought an exception, now follows the same path of decline.

The cultural ethos of the revolution reinforced this demographic winter. Parenthood, once honored as a noble vocation, came to be viewed as a hindrance to personal fulfillment. Children, once embraced as blessings, were increasingly treated as burdens or financial liabilities. The rise of abortion and widespread contraception further severed life from love, ensuring that fewer children would be born to carry forward the lineage of nations. Even in societies with material abundance, there is now a spiritual poverty that resists the sacrifice and duty required to raise families.

This demographic collapse is not a neutral statistic but an existential threat. A people that fails to reproduce condemns itself to extinction, surrendering its lands and its culture to others who still believe in the duty of life. The empty cradles of the West signify not only the loss of numbers but the loss of confidence, vitality, and future. Evola reminds us that civilizations die not only when conquered from without but when they decay from within, when they lose the will to continue their own existence.

The Sexual Revolution promised a flowering of human happiness but instead delivered sterility. It replaced the cradle with the pill, the family with the individual, and the future with the fleeting moment. The demographic crisis that now shadows the West is not an accident but the inevitable fruit of a culture that chose appetite over continuity, desire over duty, and death over life.

In the midst of the upheaval, as the Sexual Revolution reached its height, one solitary authority raised its voice against the tide. In July of 1968 Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, reaffirming the timeless teaching of the Church that the conjugal act must remain open to the transmission of life. To a world intoxicated with promises of liberation through the pill and intoxicated by its own rebellion against tradition, this teaching appeared as an obstacle to progress. Yet in truth it was a prophecy, a final warning before the descent into dissolution.

The encyclical declared that if man severed sex from procreation, grave consequences would follow. Paul VI predicted a general lowering of morality, the spread of infidelity, and the collapse of conjugal fidelity. He warned that woman, no longer regarded as a companion in sacred union, would be reduced to an object of pleasure, used by man and discarded when her novelty expired. He foresaw that governments, once granted the power to regulate life, would impose coercive controls upon their peoples in the name of social utility. Above all, he declared that the family itself would be undermined, and with it the very foundation of society.

At the time these warnings were met with ridicule. Many within the Church itself called the teaching archaic, out of step with modern life. Secular voices dismissed it as reactionary dogma destined to vanish with the old order it defended. Yet as the decades have passed, each prediction has been fulfilled with terrible accuracy. The collapse of fidelity is evident in the normalization of divorce. The degradation of woman is visible in the vast pornography industry and in a culture of commodification. State coercion appeared in policies such as China’s one-child mandate and in Western campaigns for population control in the developing world. And the weakening of the family has become the defining mark of modern society.

Humanae Vitae stands as a testament to the fact that truth does not bend to modern appetites. In reaffirming the inseparability of love and life, the Church declared that natural and divine law cannot be ignored without consequence. The encyclical’s rejection by the world revealed the depth of modernity’s rebellion. Its vindication by history shows that the rebellion has borne only corruption and decline.

The Sexual Revolution must not be understood merely as a social or biological shift. It is the manifestation of a deeper metaphysical decline. Evola reminds us that every civilization rests upon a hierarchy of values, where higher principles govern the lower. In the traditional world, sexuality was never a matter of instinct alone but a sacred power oriented toward continuity, transcendence, and divine order. By divorcing sex from procreation and reducing it to appetite, modernity inverted this hierarchy and enthroned matter above spirit.

This inversion is the essence of decadence. Spengler wrote that civilizations in their late stages turn inward, analyzing and dissolving their own foundations until nothing remains but the sterile worship of self. The Sexual Revolution embodies this Spenglerian winter. It replaced the sacramental bond of marriage with the contract of convenience, the noble polarity of man and woman with rivalry, and the generative family with barren individualism. What once reflected eternal order became a battlefield of appetites, and what once linked humanity to its ancestors and descendants was severed.

In the language of tradition, this was not liberation but profanation. Sacred mysteries were stripped of their transcendence and cast into the marketplace as commodities. The body, once a temple, was debased into an instrument of consumption. Love, once a reflection of divine unity, was disfigured into transient indulgence. By rejecting the metaphysical order that gave sex its higher meaning, man reduced himself to the level of the animal while flattering himself that he had achieved progress.

Yet even in this descent, the longing for the higher order persists. The loneliness, alienation, and despair that define modern relationships testify that man cannot live by appetite alone. He was not made for dissolution but for communion, not for sterility but for fruitfulness, not for fleeting indulgence but for eternity. The revolt against the sacred order has brought only emptiness, and in this void the call to return to tradition resounds with greater urgency.

The Sexual Revolution was not the triumph of freedom but the descent of a civilization into decadence. It promised joy and delivered sterility. It proclaimed progress and produced dissolution. It exalted the individual and destroyed the family, which alone could sustain him.

In separating love from life, duty from desire, and man from woman, it committed an atrocity against humanity, an assault not only upon social order but upon the divine order itself.

The evidence lies before us in every broken home, in every abandoned child, in every empty cradle, and in every lonely soul adrift in a culture that no longer knows permanence. Nations that once flourished in confidence and vitality now tremble before demographic collapse, burdened with aging populations and haunted by the loss of future generations. Relationships that once mirrored eternal truths have been profaned into fleeting encounters, leaving behind the ashes of alienation and despair.

Yet even now, truth has not been extinguished. Humanae Vitae stands as a witness that man cannot sever himself from natural law without consequence. Evola and Spengler remind us that civilizations perish when they abandon their higher principles and surrender to the lower. If the West is to survive, it must recover the sacred vision of family, marriage, and life as the axis of continuity.

To resist the legacy of the Sexual Revolution is to affirm that humanity was not created for dissolution but for transcendence. The future does not belong to the barren cult of appetite but to those who honor tradition, embrace sacrifice, and bring forth life. Only in such a return to the eternal order can civilization be restored, and only there can man rediscover his true freedom.