After an uproar of jokes, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli said that he will no longer use a lapel pin of Virginia’s state seal featuring Virtus, the Roman goddess of virtue, with her breasts covered up with a breastplate.

The official state seal has Virtus with her left breast bared. It was designed in the Victorian era of the eighteenth century and adopted uniformly as the state seal during 1930.

Cuccinelli emphasized that he preferred the image used during the 1861 secession from the Union because of its “historic” nature.

“I liked this particular image and thought it would be something unique for my employees,” said Cuccinelli.

Fortunately, the lapel pins with the modest image were not paid with tax dollars but from campaign contributions.

For Cuccinelli to claim his only interest in the properly clad image was historic is simply disingenuous. The only significant variation is Virtus bare-breasted in one and covered-up like a properly modest woman in the other.

Cuccinelli said the pins would no longer be distributed because of the “media-made” distraction interfering with his office’s important work.

Cuccinelli thought enough of his preferred image to select, order and distribute lapel pins. That had to be somewhat of a distraction from the work of his office as well. Yet when criticism arises over his preference for a covered-up woman, Cuccinelli lacks a good explanation. Instead he points at important work that he claims is not being completed.

Some argue that this is an unimportant story, but is it really any different than Muslim fundamentalists who want to cover women in a burqa. The covering of a female breast, a face or an ankle are simply different attempts to constrain modern women by narrow-minded men.