how old is leon kass?

kieran healy at crooked timber has posted a piece on the bizarro stance of leon kass, chairman in the president's commitee on bioethics. while some are blaming the dismantling of our once-great nation's ethics on same-sex lovin', and still others are blaming it, as ever, on fox, kass has finally had the balls to stand up and point the finger in the right direction: at the emergence of females from their chastity belts and chin-high victorian bodices.

The supreme virtue of the virtuous woman was modesty, a form of sexual self-control, manifested not only in chastity but in decorous dress and manner, speech and deed, and in reticence in the display of her well-banked affections. A virtue, as it were, made for courtship, it served simultaneously as a source of attraction and a spur to manly ardor, a guard against a woman’s own desires, as well as a defense against unworthy suitors. A fine woman understood that giving her body (in earlier times, even her kiss) meant giving her heart, which was too precious to be bestowed on anyone who would not prove himself worthy, at the very least by pledging himself in marriage to be her defender and lover forever.

aaahhhhh, the good old 1820s. they don't make dames like they used to, that's for sure. i don't know even one who's interested in being protected from her own desires, and clearly that's the source of global warming--all those flushed and sweaty ladies exposing their hot, pink, musky skin day in and day out, without waiting or even caring to be sufficiently wooed.

well, stop it, girls! you're ruining everything! drop out of college, cover up your ankles, stop looking men in the eye and seal up your vagina with bedding epoxy; it's not just for your own sake, it's for the sake of america.