WASHINGTON (ABP) — A civil-liberties group is challenging the constitutionality of government support for an abstinence-only sex-ed program that bills itself as an “evangelistic ministry” and gives teenagers silver rings inscribed with a Bible passage.
The Massachusetts branch of the American Civil Liberties Union sued the federal Department of Health and Human Services May 16 to stop funding of the Silver Ring Thing program.
ACLU lawyers said the program violates the Constitution's ban on government establishment of religion.
According to court papers, the program has received over $1 million in federal funding in the past three years. Also known as the John Guest Evangelistic Team, the group's newsletter said the program's mission is to “call our world to Christ,” and that one way to do that 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….”
At the end of the group's presentations, students are encouraged to wear a silver ring inscribed with “I Thess. 4:3-4.” The passage, from the apostle Paul's first letter to the ancient church at Thessalonica, encourages Christians to avoid sexual sin.
The suit also says participants in the ring programs are encouraged to accept Jesus Christ as their savior.
“Both because the federal funding of the Silver Ring Thing constitutes a direct government grant to a pervasively sectarian institution and because the federal dollars are demonstrably underwriting religious activities and religious content, the funding violates the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the lawsuit says.
A staffer who answered the phone at Silver Ring Thing's Pennsylvania headquarters said the organization's president, Denny Pattyn, was not available. But he forwarded Associated Baptist Press a statement Pattyn released in which he said he had not seen the lawsuit but “is aware of the proper designation of the federal funds received and asserts that these monies have been properly directed.”
The case is ACLU of Massachusetts vs. Leavitt.
The case is similar to one the ACLU won in 2002. In that case, the organization successfully sued Louisiana government officials for funding an abstinence-only sex-education curriculum with religious content. ACLU recently asked a federal court to hold the program in contempt for failing to implement the previous ruling.