To follow up on a series of posts I did last August, I’m pleased to report that an evangelical abstinence-only program, called the Silver Ring Thing, will no longer receive funding from the federal government.
In the settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union, reached today, the Department of Health and Human Services agreed to stop funding the Silver Ring Thing program until it complies with laws forbidding federal dollars from funding religious activities.
The Silver Ring Thing, based in suburban Pittsburgh, is a nationwide program that uses music and comedy skits to promote premarital abstinence. The ACLU claimed in a May lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Boston that the program was crossing the line by using federal grant money to urge teens to commit their lives to Jesus Christ.
And the lawsuit was right. Of all the federally-funded abstinence programs, “Silver Ring Thing” has always been among the most problematic. This is an evangelical Christian program that’s received more than $1.2 million in federal and state subsidies, despite offering wildly irresponsible lessons about contraceptives to young adults — including the notion that a sexually-active teenager is better off avoiding condoms altogether because, the group says, they won’t offer protection against pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.
It’s a shame that Silver Ring Thing will continue to spout its nonsense to an untold number of American teens, but at least the group won’t be using our money to do it anymore.
Just as an aside, it’s worth noting that the administration didn’t pull funding because Silver Ring Thing’s program is a failure that doesn’t prevent young adults from having sex (though it is); it pulled funding because the courts wouldn’t let Bush fund a program that’s stated goal was to “communicate the Good News of the Gospel.” With the Bush gang, effectiveness in a government-sponsored program is largely irrelevant.