Christian Schoolgirls are forced to take off chastity rings
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Schoolgirls are forced to take off chastity rings - or be ordered out
of lessons*
Gaby Hinsliff, political editor
Aug 17, 2006
The Observer
It is only a band of silver, imprinted with a Bible verse, worn by a
schoolgirl.
But the decision by one of the country's top state schools to ban
American-style 'purity rings' - increasingly worn by Christian teenagers
to symbolise a pledge not to have sex before marriage - has prompted not
just a standoff with local parents, but a debate over religious
expression and sex education.
Heather and Philip Playfoot have spent almost two years in dispute with
Millais School in Horsham, West Sussex, over their 15-year-old daughter
Lydia's ring. While the school's uniform rules forbid jewellery, they
argue that the rings - given to teenagers who complete a controversial
evangelical church course preaching sexual abstinence - hold genuine
religious significance.
'The ring is a reminder to them of the promise they have made, much the
same as a wedding ring is an outward sign of an inward promise,' said
Heather Playfoot.
'There are Muslim girls in the school who are allowed to wear the
headcovering, although that isn't part of the school uniform, and Sikh
girls who are allowed the wear the bangle although that isn't part of
the uniform. It's a discriminatory policy.
'We don't want her education to be disrupted because of it but we do
want her to feel free to wear something that is very significant.'
The family claim that Lydia and up to a dozen other pupils wearing
purity rings have been forced to take lessons in isolation as punishment
for breaking the rules, threatened with detention and that - in Lydia's
case - the school governors intimated she could be expelled for
repeatedly defying the rules. Heather Playfoot said the school had told
them it was a health and safety issue.
Lydia has now stopped wearing the ring in school. 'It makes me feel
quite upset and angry as well, and in a way betrayed a little, because
the school are always teaching us to be safe and we are trying to stand
up for something,' she told The Observer. 'We get picked on and called
out of lessons to see if we have got [the rings] on. I do actually keep
to the school rules and I don't like stepping out of line or anything,
but I just think this is really unfair.'
Her ring came from the Silver Ring Thing, an evangelical initiative
recently introduced to Britain from the US, with which her parents'
local church is involved.
The organisation is highly controversial, with some experts arguing that
abstinence pledges are actually less effective than conventional sexual
education which advocates teenagers waiting until they are ready, but
emphasises safe sex.
Silver Ring Thing is critical of contraception, suggesting it is
dangerously fallible - which critics say only encourages teenagers who
do break their pledges to have unprotected sex.
The Playfoots however are equally critical of standard sex education.
'Here you have 12 girls who want to live an alternative lifestyle: we
are not asking the school to subscribe to it, just respect it,' said
Heather Playfoot.
The issue has now been taken up by the Tory MP Andrew Selous, chair of
the Conservative Christian Fellowship, who raised the wearing of purity
rings with the Schools Minister Jim Knight in the House of Commons last
week.
Knight told him in a written parliamentary answer that while school
governors had freedom to set uniform rules, government guidance states
that they 'should have regard to their responsibilities under equalities
legislation' and be 'sensitive to pupils' cultural and religious needs'.
Selous said while many schools banned jewellery he did not see a problem
with purity rings, adding: 'Given that the government is failing to
avchieve its teenage pregnancy targets, you would have thought that
schools would do everything in their power to help children help
themselves.'
However Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society defended the
school, adding: 'If the school has the uniform policy I don't see why it
should make an exception for this. I'm deeply distrustful of these
Silver Ring Thing-type initiatives: the research is quite clear that
they don't work.'
Leon Nettley, headmaster of the Millais School, said in a statement that
the school's own sex education programme already stressed the illegality
of underage sex and encouraged pupils to discuss the issues, adding: 'In
relation to the issue of wearing a purity ring, the school is not
convinced that pupils' rights have been interfered with by the
application of the school's uniform policy.'
The abstinence debate
Hundreds of British teenagers are thought to have gone through courses
organised by the Silver Ring Thing, created a decade ago by two
Christian activists in Arizona as a response to rising teenage
pregnancies. It promotes abstinence before marriage and sexual fidelity
within it, using Bible teachings and DVD clips to emphasise the horrors
of sexually transmitted diseases and abortions.
At the end of the course, children prepared to pledge chastity can pay
£10 for a silver purity ring to be given to their spouse on their
wedding day: even non-virgins can be 'born again'.
US President George Bush has heavily advocated abstinence teaching,
budgeting $170 million a year for it. However, research by Columbia and
Yale Universities found while those who pledge chastity may delay first
sex, 88 per cent of them eventually break the promise, and are then less
likely than non-pledgers to use contraception.
A MORI poll for The Observer found a fifth of British teenagers had had
underage sex. The average age of losing virginity was 17. Almost a third
of women questioned wished they had waited longer.