The Silver Ring Thing believes it is the solution to the spiralling Irish rates of STIsWith Ireland's golden age of marriage replaced by the dawn of co-habitation, is this fertile ground for a US crusade on sexual abstinence? Susan Calnan reports
A leading American abstinence movement, which promotes the benefits of sexual chastity before marriage, visited Ireland for the first time last week.
Following its visit to Ireland, the Silver Ring Thing Movement hopes to grow its membership of more than 22,000 young people in the US with Irish teenagers declaring their belief in the benefits of pre-marital chastity.
While the message of "no sex before marriage" may seem outdated in today's more sexually liberated times, the Silver Ring Thing Movement insists escalating rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and teenage pregnancies indicate that sex education programmes are failing to get the safe sex message across to young people - Irish teens included.
In the Republic, the number of STIs are continuing to rise; the latest available figures from the National Disease and Surveillance Centre (NDSC), for example, show the number of STIs increased by 9.4 per cent in 2001 compared with 2000. Further figures show there has been a significant increase in infections such as chlamydia, genital herpes, warts and gonorrhoea. Even more worrying is the dramatic rise in the number of cases of syphilis in Ireland.
So what is the solution to the spiralling Irish rates of STIs and why doesn't the safe sex message seem to be getting through to Ireland's sexually active population?
Genito-urinary physician and leading expert on sexually transmitted diseases in Ireland Dr Derek Freedman says that although the current sex education programmes in schools are a start, they are not hard-hitting enough.
"The patients who come into my clinic every day consistently bemoan the fact that sex education in schools is ineffective," says Dr Freedman, "and that it fails to address the important issues, in particular in relation to the spread of STIs."
Vast demographic changes in our society mean young people today are living in an increasingly sexualised culture, he notes.
"The golden age of marriage has been replaced by the dawn of co-habitation," he says, "and, as a result, sex is no longer controlled by marriage; people are postponing the age at which they settle down and so they are spending longer periods of time without a stable relationship, in what has been described as a sexual marketplace."
Dr Freedman adds that although abstinence programmes such as the Silver Ring Thing do increase the rate of abstinence among young people, reports indicate it only delays the sexual debut by about six months; and when people on abstinence programmes do eventually initiate sex, they tend to take more risks because they aren't as well versed or equipped in relation to having protected sex.
Rather than preaching abstinence to young people, Dr Freedman is an advocate of education programmes that give young people straight factual information and promote the concept of "quality sex", or sex with someone who values and cares for that person.
"Just as young people learn that smoking can cause cancer, they need to learn that unprotected intercourse, and in some cases physical contact alone, can lead to the spread of infections. They need to learn that many of these infections are silent and that they can have serious, long-term consequences if they are not treated."
President of the Catholic School's Parents Association, David Hegarty, argues, however, that educational material that is too "sexually explicit" only sends out the wrong message to young people. Teaching school children about contraception, for example, is completely against the ethos of Catholic schools, and schools need to be more discerning in the type of material they teach in these programmes, he adds.
"In our experience, too liberal an approach only adds to the problem rather than solves it," he insists. "Our organisation would like to see a greater emphasis on family values being taught on these programmes, as well as teaching children the difference between right and wrong.
"I think now more than ever there is a need for stressing traditional moral values, such as sexual abstinence before marriage, and for promoting more stable, family-oriented beliefs."
Psychotherapist Sally O'Reilly, who specialises in adolescent counselling, says one of her biggest concerns is in relation to the "relentless and sexually explicit" nature of advertising and other media, which is aimed at young people. "Teenagers are constantly being bombarded with sexual imagery through television, advertising, magazines and music videos," she says.
"These images are giving young people the message that in order to be a valuable person, you have to be sexually provocative and attractive. This in turn is putting huge pressure on teenagers to conform to this image and to become sexually active at an earlier age."
O'Reilly, who also co-runs a drugs prevention and personal development programme in schools in Cork, says one of the common complaints she hears from young people is that sex education in schools is not relevant enough to what's going on in their own lives. She is in favour of a more liberal sex education programme, delivered by professionals who are specially trained in the area, rather than by teachers within the school.
Young people should get information on STIs and on contraception, O'Reilly says, but, more importantly, they need to be empowered to make choices that are right for them and which do not necessarily adhere to the "MTV culture of today".
Spokeswoman for the National Parents Council Post-Primary, Marion Lyon, believes the current Social and Personal Health Education (SPHE) programme, which incorporates relationships and sexuality education and which is now compulsory in all schools up to and including the Junior Cert cycle, does address the main issues relevant to young people today.
However, she is concerned about the level of in-service and pre-service training teachers who deliver these programmes are getting.
Teachers need to receive adequate training and support and must feel comfortable in the role if they are going to deliver these programmes successfully, she says.
Equally important, Lyon insists, is the need for greater participation by students and parents in the planning and evaluation of sex education programmes in schools.