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Silver Ring Thing hits UK

Our Lady Has Left the Building

11:40 / 24.06.04

The Silver Ring Thing project has come to evangelise in the UK. After watching the 'American Virgins' program on them earlier in the year and then the Newsnight article last night I'm dubious as to whether they'll have much luck persuading British teens to just say no. And their leader seems to have decided the UK needed them based on the usual '12 year olds having abortions' storylines published in the Daily Mail. Certainly both programs give airtime to stupid Christian teens who tend to say things about how all sexually transmitted diseases are lethal.

Are they going to have much luck over here? And is their success back home based on them persuading young people who were likely to be Christians and practice abstinence to be Christian and pratcice abstinence but also wear a small Silver Ring?

George Monbiot: abstinence training increases the rate of teenage pregnancy.

pointless and uncalled for

13:14 / 24.06.04

Like just about anything anywhere there is guaranteed to be a certain level of uptake. All you have to do is take a look at groups like The Modern Jesus Army to appreciate that there is an inevitable degree of susceptibility to being told that you are doing something wrong and need to join a group to do something right.

That said, I think that the British Youth is far more grounded and cynical in it's approach to life and a lot more apathetic when it comes to joining in. Something that I see as being borne out in the marked absence of such American constructs like The Glee Club and other School based socail grouping. Admittedly this is a rather negative outlook but in this instance I think that may serve as a saving grace.

In my estimation this will be another flash in the pan cause to which a few celebrity moral guardians will casually attach their name. It's main downfall will be lack of momentum and fervour, which we just can't seem to get right over here (even Robot Kilroy-Shit has gone a bit "erm" over "wrecking the European Parliament"). If anyone joins in then they'll wind up with the "what do we do now?" mentaility, to which the answer is absolutely nothing. The largest nail in the coffin will be the main event in either Trafalgar Square or Hyde Park or somewhere else outdoors. It will rain heavily and all the kids will go home and in Trainspotting style will return to moral backsliding as quick as fucking possible. Tokens and icons of the campaign will be left in the corner of some sweaty teenage room until spring clean time where they will be hurriedly shoved in a bin liner and the existence of which will be henceforth vehemetly denied a la "I only went along to see what it was about".

13:26 / 24.06.04

...and making kids pay £10 for the silver ring seems a bit steep, especially after receiving $700,000 from the US government...

13:28 / 24.06.04

Anything to stop the fucking christians from breeding.

Cheap. Easy. Cruel.

13:59 / 24.06.04

This will probably prove to be as popular in the UK as it did in the States. Not very. There was a big flap about it when it first started, and now you never hear about it. This is largely an inneffective program, I knew plenty of kids in high school who had the rings and just fucked anyway.

14:43 / 24.06.04

said on the news last night that maybe 20000 had signed up. out of, say, seventy million under-eighteens? fucking stupid virgins, go home and stop wasting everyone's time

Foust is SO authentic

18:05 / 24.06.04

I'm curious - why is a decision to not have sex so contemptible to all of you? Why are you mocking something that is, after all, just another lifestyle choice?

Making fun of the hypocrisy is one thing. A boring, easy thing, sure. But making fun of the commitment? Seems fairly small minded of you all.

You sound like Christians who condemn gay sex, basically.

Ex

19:18 / 24.06.04

I'm happy to support anyone's decision not to have sex. I hope that the hostility here isn't directed at that choice, but at the US governmental funding for religiously motivated abstinence-only sex education campaigns. With which I also have huge problems.

I'd like to see kids feel empowered to resist pressure to be sexual, both cultural and personal, when it's wrong for them. I think that can be done by improving their knowledge about sex, and their self esteem and communication skills.
The Silver Ring Thing and similar campaigns, as far as I've seen, condemn all sex outside a narrow marital het model, promote exaggerated fear of sexually transmitted diseases without offering accurate information on how to prevent their transmission (apart from abstinence) and don't seem to be particularly effective in delaying intercourse or preventing unplanned pregnancy or STD transmission (The Institute of Medicine, American Medical Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office of National AIDS Policy).

So yes, misplaced hostility - stop poking the pledgy teens and start poking the dodgy, weirdly fascinated older men who organise these things.

Ex

19:36 / 24.06.04

(And while the sound of mocking may be reminiscent of Christian Americans bashing gay sex, I don't think there's any real deeper equivalence; taking The Pledge may result in peer pressure and poking, but will also give you a shiny new crew and a rewarded, normative sexual identity. I don't know of many teens who are thrown out of their homes for being heterosexual virgins, or who lack positive depictions of married couples in the media, blah blah fishcakes...)

07:43 / 25.06.04

um er uh cos abstinence only sex ed plans lead to higher incidence of unwanted pregnancy and venereal infection um er uh

pointless and uncalled for

07:46 / 25.06.04

I'm curious - why is a decision to not have sex so contemptible to all of you? Why are you mocking something that is, after all, just another lifestyle choice?

I can't see anywhere in my post that indicated that abstinence is contemptible and under no circumstances did I intend to convey that message. I was simply commenting on how I think that England will react to the Silver Ring Thing.

What I do find contemptible are the general symptoms of propoganda that pervade these campaigns. There is regularly a lack of information being put forward by abstinence groups and yet they will portray their side of the story as the complete picture, leaving out any off message details. The whole concept of a moral guardian campaign being based on propoganda and run with a theological spin is incredibly distasteful. If there is a God (debates in another thread please) then I can't for one moment imagine the he would be pleased about this. I can't really see how organised peer pressure and near compulsory expenditure can be reconciled with the word of God. Are poor people doomed to a life of turpitude, sickness and damnation?

Further more to this the SRT appear to be preaching Christianity as morality, which is grevious misrepresentation and marginalisation of other religious groups. Add to this the government involvement and the entire situation becomes incredibly contemptible, particularly when said government like to whip out the "separation of church and state" platform when it's convenient. It all adds up to something that seems to me as very wrong. I see no justification of morality based on propoganda and spin, misrepresentation of facts and state sponsored theistic descrimination.

However, to make myself perfectly clear on this issue, if a person elects a lifestyle when presented with all of the information in an unbiased arena, then I wholeheartedly respect and support their decision and their right to make that decision. Furthermore I think that socially we should be doing more to ensure that such an arena be protected and provided to more people.

Whale... Whale... Fish!

12:11 / 25.06.04

Why do the rings cost more here than in the US?

pointless and uncalled for

12:53 / 25.06.04

My guess is transportation, personnel overheads and taxation. We don't give the same breaks to religious organisation as the states do and (IIRC) there are odd funding regulations in the US.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

15:59 / 25.06.04

Grrr. News 24 has just had an item on the SRT (thankfully with someone from a family planning group saying they were useless), but had the head honcho of SRT say "sexual abstinence is 100% effective, when people are committed to it". Isn't that one of the most meaningless statements ever? "If someone doesn't kill anyone, then the number of people killed by him is zero".

Tryphena Absent

20:18 / 26.06.04

It's the kind of statement that makes you want to eat a cucumber sandwich, drink a cup of tea and vaguely reply with a 'well, yes, I did know that actually. Tell me, when did you lose your cherry?'

14:39 / 30.04.06

Bumping this, two years on, to see if anyone knows whether abstinence education is catching on in the UK? Every now and again I see a news report saying that it is being introduced, has been introduced, will be introduced in some schools but I can't find any up-to-date statistics, and everything I can find on the web says that the UK Government is not funding any abstinence-based education programmes. So that's good.

This site, Love for Life, is a Northern-Ireland based charity which visits schools with an abstinence-based programme (the New Scientist mentions it in this article from March 2005), but their 2004/5 newsletter is encouragingly depressed about not getting any funding from the Government.