A quarterly international newsletter on sexuality, sexual health, and sexuality education.
Volume 3, Issue 2 - Summer 2004
The Silver Ring Thing: Just One Example of Abstinence-Only-Until-Marriage Programs Going Global
The Silver Ring Thing (SRT) is a U.S.-based, abstinence-only-until-marriage program that took its show on the road this summer, sending a team of 30 representatives to the United Kingdom. SRT is merely one of many similar programs looking to take programs that have not worked in the U.S. and export them to countries worldwide.
The Silver Ring Thing uses comedy skits, music, and a high-tech club-like atmosphere to communicate its abstinence- only-until-marriage message to middle and high school students. At the end of the presentation, students are offered the opportunity to take a pledge of abstinence until marriage, symbolized by placing silver rings on their fingers. Rings are intended to be worn until the students' wedding nights.The program promotes complete abstinence as the only way to stay physically and emotionally healthy. The program does not mention contraception at all. For participants who have been sexually active in the past, the program offers a message of "Second Virginity" and a second chance to remain abstinent until marriage.
Based on Religious Beliefs
SRT is Christian-based, although the program draws both religious and non-religiously affiliated students and holds events in private and public venues, including public schools. According to the SRT April newsletter, "The Silver Ring Thing is now the primary outreach of the John Guest Team.The mission is to saturate the United States with a generation of young people who have taken a vow of sexual abstinence until marriage and put on the silver ring. This mission can only be achieved by offering a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as the best way to live a sexually pure life."1 During the pledging ceremony, participants have the opportunity to make a covenant with God regarding their decision to remain abstinent.
The John Guest Evangelistic Team, the parent organization responsible for SRT, works domestically "…to communicate the message of Jesus Christ to the unchurched through creative, media-based and one-onone evangelism."2
The establishment clause of the First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution prohibits programs from using federal funds to promote specific religious beliefs. Nonetheless, the Silver Ring Thing receives significant funding from the U.S. government, totaling $1.1 million over the past two years.3 Still, SRT continues to deliver an explicitly religious message. Silver Ring Thing founder Dennis Pattyn told the Agape Press, "The enemy certainly is out there wanting to destroy the work—and sometimes the enemy is actually the church itself, unbelievably—but we're having to be much more careful about how we operate. We don't ever want to take the gospel [out] of our message because we believe the power for abstinence is a changed heart, not a ring on a finger." Pattyn estimates that 20 percent of participants who receive the silver ring also choose to "give their lives over to Christ."4
Expanding Internationally
Silver Ring Thing has been working to expand their program in the international arena.The program's debut in the U.K. this summer garnered great media attention.5 For £10, individuals were able to purchase the trademark silver ring which comes with a Silver Ring Thing Bible.6 The Silver Ring Thing is also pursuing funding to launch their program in Africa. SRT's parent organization,The John Guest Team, has an established presence in Africa. In fact, it is in the fifth year of a ten-year mission to the Bunyoro-Kitara region of Uganda through the Encounter Uganda program of Christ Church at Grove Farm.Two SRT representatives traveled to Uganda in January to lobby U.S. government agency representatives and local leaders to support SRT.According to their newsletter,"the [U.S.] Ambassador was very encouraging and agreed that the Silver Ring Thing would be a welcome addition to the disease prevention programs already operated by USAID in Uganda."7
In upcoming years, SRT is likely to receive federal funding for its Africa program. In February 2004, the Bush Administration released the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief: U.S. Five-Year Global HIV/AIDS Strategy (the U.S. Strategy, also known as PEPFAR).Among other prevention, treatment, and care initiatives, the U.S. Strategy will provide not less than $133 million annually for abstinence-untilmarriage programs in focus countries in Africa and the Caribbean.8 In fact, SRT was mentioned by name in the U.S. House Of Representative's 2004 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill,"in Uganda, Kenya and elsewhere in Africa, as part of a broad range of responses to the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the Committee supports expansion of programs to promote sexual abstinence… Proposals by established programs such as Stay Alive and Silver Ring merit special consideration by the AIDS Coordinator."9
There is no evidence that The Silver Ring Thing or similar abstinence-only-until-marriage programs reduce rates of unintended pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. In fact, virginity pledges are undermining the use of contraception and disease-prevention methods among teens, potentially exposing them to greater harm. Researchers found that under limited circumstances virginity pledges helped young people delay the onset of sexual intercourse for an average of 18 months (a goal still far short of the average age of marriage). However, the study also found that those young people who took a pledge were one-third less likely to use contraception when they did become sexually active than their peers who had not pledged.10 The same researchers have further concluded that young people who take virginity pledges have the same rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) as young people who do not pledge abstinence.11 Their data also shows that in communities where there are too many pledgers (over 20%), overall STD rates were significantly higher than in other settings.12
The Silver Ring Thing is just one example of many abstinence-only-until-marriage programs that are taking their message overseas. For example, the U.S.-based Abstinence Clearinghouse now boasts 350 affiliates in Africa.13 The programs are expanding at an alarming rate and it is important that both program providers and policy professionals remember that these types of programs offer marriage as the exclusive method of preventing unintended pregnancy and STD infection, as well as the only morally correct choice. "The evidence domestically shows that these types of programs may be harmful to young people's ability to make healthy decisions about their own sexuality. Now these unproven programs are being exported world wide, supported by the Bush Administration's President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief," said William Smith, director of public policy for SIECUS. He continued, "We cannot fight HIV/AIDS with either condoms or abstinence. This is not a one or the other situation. This is about providing all people with the comprehensive sexual health information, services, technologies, and skills they need to prevent the transmission of HIV."
For more information, please see Silver Ring Thing at http://www.silverringthing.com. or contact SIECUS.
References:
Web Master: siecus@siecus.org