US chastity crusade gets cool response in secular Britain

[CShine]

CLAYGATE, ENGLAND – Lisa High's story is a classic salutary tale of adolescent sex. After getting her pregnant at 17, her boyfriend got cold feet. She thought briefly of abortion, but couldn't go through with it. Now Lisa is 21, a single mom living in South London - but she is hardly unique. Every year, 40,000 British girls under 18 become pregnant, a promiscuity "epidemic" that gives Britain by far the highest rate of teenage mothers in Western Europe. Figures like these have persuaded an American group espousing total chastity to bring its missionary zeal to Britain's teenagers.

The Silver Ring Thing, which claims to have won over 22,000 young Americans to the virtues of abstinence, is bringing more than two dozen of its converts to spread the word through a series of glitzy media events starting Friday in this town south of London. Yet the Silver Ring Thing tour is proving controversial before it has even started.

Early press coverage has been snippy at best, hostile at worst. Cultural commentators have scoffed that outreach based on American Christian-based values, supported by $700,000 in US federal funds, will not necessarily transplant easily in a society that has become defiantly secular.

<snip>

Since the 1960s, when the sexual revolution threw off the last vestiges of Victorian values,the British approach has started from the position that many children will experiment with sex. Information is therefore crucial, and efforts have concentrated on sex education in schools, informing children about contraception, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), risk reduction, and family planning. Yet statistics show the approach has yet to turn the tide. Teen pregnancy rates in Britain remain five times as high as some parts of Europe such as the Netherlands and Sweden - though still much lower than in the United States.


http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0623/p01s03-woeu.html

[oldhat]

1. Geez, these kiddies need to get some ass.

See also, Junior Anti-Sex League (George Orwell, "1984")

[dethl]

2. Abstinence is not the complete answer

You're not going to stop everyone from having sex, espically teens. What we should be doing is advocating protection, even if it scares the religious right, we'll have less teen pregnancies.

On a side note, I graduated a year ago from a high school with the largest teen pregnancy rate in the state of New Mexico (which I believe has the highest percent of teens getting pregant if I remember right). The only program being taught is abstinance. No programs on protection at all. The main reason? The religious people thinking condoms will make teens have sex. Not true it seems.

[hang a left]

7. Welcome to DU and hello dethl.

THanks for the story.

[NashVegas]

3. And We're Funding This?

Let's see:

We wipe out family planning funds overseas to any third world clinic that advises abortion. Then we turn around and put US tax dollars in the attempt to force fundie mores on an industrialized nation?

Keep it up, George, keep uniting the tribes as only you can.

[TreasonousBastard]

4. SEVEN HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS!!!!!!

To tell British kids to stop fucking???????

This is fiscal responsibility??????

This makes an ounce of sense on any planet?????

And, of course, there is that pesky question of giving our tax dollars to a church group to preach.

[corriger]

5. lol american tourists abroad

making even more asses of themselves than they usually are already

[Maeve]

6. And our teen pregnancy rate is HIGHER than theirs!!!

Theatre of the Absurd strikes again!

[Kimber Scott]

8. What's even funnier is our teen pregnancy rate is higher than theirs!

My God what is wrong with these people? These fundamentalist A-holes need to pull the logs out of thine own eyes. JEEEESUS CHRIST! This is embarrassing.

[Cronus Protagonist]

10. Bush's Faith Based Initiatives at work

I wonder how much of that money is used on "overhead"....


ANYBODY BUT BUSH

Click here for "ANYBODY BUT BUSH", and other fair and balanced yet stunning buttons, magnets and stickers

[lumberingbear]

9. More pressure to teens!!!

Abstinence just adds more pressure to teens, and add the
"religious guilt" if they don't abstain. Don't these
groups ever think about these things???  :shrug: 

[Vogon_Glory]

11. The Up Side to This Folly

The up side to this folly is that the American fundamentalist/evangelical right wing is going to get exposed to some well-deserved ridicule. Unless these people resort to their usual gimmicks to stifle discussion, they'll have a difficult time fending off questions about sky-high American teen pregnancy rates and the rise in VD rates even among people who have supposedly attended abstinence-only sex ed class and/or have taken "abstinence" pledges.

[struggle4progress]

12. We're spending MY tax dollars to tell UK girls how to behave?

:wtf:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. I visited Europe once--in 1967 as a teenager

My parents' first shock came in England when we ended up on the train in the company of a young unmarried couple who were living together. They were aghast at the sight of couples avidly making out in the parks in London. They were even more shocked when we took a coastal ferry in Norway with some cousins, and Cousin Jon Arne shared a cabin overnight with his girlfriend. They were still more shocked when the advice column in a German teen magazine I bought contained a letter from a 16-year-old girl who worried because she was the only girl in her circle of friends who was still a virgin.

If the fundies want to make the British and othere Europeans "chaste," they're about 35 years too late.