Chastity, Belted

Celebrating a Deathday™: Chastity died on this day — and by chastity I mean “the condition or quality of being chaste” and not “Chastity Bono,” who’s alive and well and adjusting to life as a goateed, 48-inch waisted male. (Not that there's anything wrong with it, God bless his or her heart.) Yes, chastity, virtue and honor all took a back seat — as it were — with the introduction of the combined oral contraceptive pill (COCP) on May 9, 1960. Developed by a team of sex-and-opiate crazed scientists in Amsterdam to prevent ovulation, "the pill" encouraged promiscuity among climaxing feminists — Erica Jong, Joan Baez, Barbara Walters — and their bed-hopping, hippy boyfriends — David Crosby, Bob Dylan, Hugh Downs. No longer would decent young men relieve testel pressure with an icy cold shower, while their galfriends clutched their diaries between their legs and rocked themselves to sleep. The “pill” signaled the start of the sexual revolution, which was not an actual revolution with muskets, but rather one with bayonets, of sorts, that poked and prodded with urgency, but only between consulting adults. 'Twas a sad and somber time for moral married folk who questioned their sexless unions in the face of rampant, free-loving fornication. Also on this day — May 9, 1949 — doe-eyed pee-yeah-no man, Billy Joel was born in Brooklyn or the Bronx to a mum who sadly didn’t have the COCP pill available to stave off his arrival — 70 years ago today — or that infernal "We Didn't Start the Fire" business that he gave bloody birth to.