Breaking into new territory (or is he?), the titanically polymathic brain of Leon Kass has a few modest proposals for the betterment of American matrimony. Reception has been mixed.

The AEI, faith based, and evangelical communities are nodding their solemn approval like dashboard bobble dolls. Those of a more secular bent are taking a more judgmental stance. It helps restore my faith in popular culture.

Here are a few excerpts from the piece in question. I've boldfaced or italicized some of the more memorable bits, but I'm not really sure I needed to. They fairly leap off the page of their own accord.

Until what seems like only yesterday, young people were groomed for marriage...at the beginning of this century, our grandfathers came a-calling and a-wooing at the homes of our grandmothers, under conditions set by the woman, operating from strength on her own turf.

A generation later, courting couples began to go out on "dates," in public and increasingly on the man's terms...

To be sure, some people "played the field,"...

Finding a mate, no less than getting an education that would enable him to support her, was at least a tacit goal of many a male undergraduate...

Well, that was then and this is now. What about today's young women?

Sexually active — in truth, hyperactive — they flop about from one relationship to another...they manage to appear all at once casual and carefree and grim and humorless about getting along with the opposite sex. The young men, nervous predators, act as if any woman is equally good...

Sheesh. Get him drunk enough and he may act like it. But, in all honesty, he would tell you it simply isn't so. Young men have a very discerning eye when it comes to young women, and I'm not just talking about physical appearance.

But most young women strike me as sad, lonely, and confused...

As numerous commenters have pointed out, perhaps this is because they are at the University of Chicago ("Where fun comes to die"), taking a course from Leon Kass.

Cogent point? Cheap shot? You be the judge.

Those very few who couple off seriously and get married upon graduation as we, their parents, once did are looked upon as freaks.

This observation does not jibe with my own experience.

After college, the scene is even more remarkable and bizarre: singles bars, personal "partner wanted" ads (almost never mentioning marriage as a goal), men practicing serial monogamy (or what someone has aptly renamed "rotating polygamy"), women chronically disappointed in the failure of men "to commit."

For the first time in human history, mature women by the tens of thousands live the entire decade of their twenties - their most fertile years — neither in the homes of their fathers nor in the homes of their husbands; unprotected, lonely, and out of sync with their inborn nature.

All this time I've been pushing the bioethics angle, to little or no apparent interest, and now this comes along and blows the doors off. I would guess it's because almost everyone has personal experience of love, marriage, infidelity, and all that other fun, humanistic stuff.

Let's face it. For most people science, test tubes, cloning, it can be kind of boring. But sex hits them where they live. Coming from a position of personal experience, they may feel more involvement in these particular foggy ruminations.

Some women positively welcome this state of affairs, but most do not; resenting the personal price they pay for their worldly independence, they nevertheless try to put a good face on things and take refuge in work or feminist ideology.

Those women and men who get lucky enter into what the personal ads call LTRs...usually to discover how short an LTR can be.

When, after a series of such affairs, marriage happens to them, they enter upon it guardedly and suspiciously, with prenuptial agreements, no common surname, and separate bank accounts....

See, I've known for years about Dr. Kass's squishy, half-baked sociological notions. I dismissed them as being mildly amusing and of no account. First, because there's nothing he can do about them. Absolutely nothing. Second, even if he could, the problems he engendered would be relatively benign compared to his bioethical mischief.

I've concentrated on his bioethical side because that is where he can do genuine harm to people. In the worst possible scenario, our Leon might actually manage to delay the implementation of a life saving therapy. If not, it won't be for lack of trying.

If he were to succeed in his publicly stated aims, it is at least conceivable that thousands of people will die needlessly premature deaths. I find that annoying. Those who have tried to point this out to him have received more-or-less perfunctory dismissals.

Our hearts go out not only to the children of failed- or non-marriages — to those betrayed by their parents' divorce and to those deliberately brought into the world as bastards — but also to the lonely, disappointed, cynical, misguided, or despondent people who are missing out on one of life's greatest adventures...

Well, that's just great. But the problem with squishy, half-baked analyses is that they seldom lead to simple, concrete suggestions for improvement. What is it, exactly, that we should be doing to breast this evil tide in the affairs of men?

A more discerning analysis is called for. And here it is!

Here is a (partial) list of the recent changes that hamper courtship and marriage:

the sexual revolution, made possible especially by effective female contraception;

the ideology of feminism and the changing educational and occupational status of women;

the destigmatization of bastardy, divorce, infidelity, and abortion;

the general erosion of shame and awe regarding sexual matters, exemplified most vividly in the ubiquitous and voyeuristic presentation of sexual activity in movies and on television;

widespread morally neutral sex education in schools;

the explosive increase in the numbers of young people whose parents have been divorced (and in those born out of wedlock, who have never known their father);

great increases in geographic mobility, with a resulting loosening of ties to place and extended family of origin;

and, harder to describe precisely, a popular culture that celebrates youth and independence not as a transient stage en route to adulthood but as "the time of our lives,"...

It's a good start. Can we narrow the focus a bit?

The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it?...

Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply.

Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one's partner than for one's mother.

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...

Once female modesty became a first casualty of the sexual revolution, even women eager for marriage lost their greatest power to hold and to discipline their prospective mates. For it is a woman's refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man's lust into love.

Unless she can give, like, really good head...

Women also lost the capacity to discover their own genuine longings and best interests. For only by holding herself in reserve does a woman gain the distance and self-command needed to discern what and whom she truly wants and to insist that the ardent suitor measure up.

Whew! And that's just part one of three! Stay tuned for further developments.

Here's a list of blogs that beat me to the punch. I am mortified.

World O' Crap

Lawyers, Guns and Money

Crooked Timber

Political Animal

John Quiggin

Oxblog

Roger Ailes

Philosoraptor

The Daily Aneurysm

Eschaton

Cinematic Rain

CMoore.com

Letters of Marque

Echidne Of The Snakes

Crushed By Inertia

Pandagon

Many of these blogs have generated insightful and humorous commentary. I urge you to check them out. Heh heh. Imagine. Some people say my arguments are ad hominem.

Time presses, but when I have a chance I'll post a few serious defenses of our favorite ethicist. Seriously. Till then, let's all get out there and start re-stigmatizing bastardy.