UK: Schoolgirl goes to court over chastity ring (while Muslim students can wear bracelets)

The Telegraph (U.K.) ^ | April 28, 2007 | Jonathan Petre and

[Stoat]

Schoolgirl goes to court over chastity ring

By Jonathan Petre, Religion Correspondent, and Hazel Southam
 

Last Updated: 3:52am BST 28/04/2007

 

 

• A teenage girl banned from wearing a Christian chastity ring at school is taking her case to the High Court.

  Lydia Playfoot wanted to wear a silver ring that showed her commitment to remain a virgin until marriage. But her school refused permission on health and safety grounds and because the ring infringed its jewellery policy.

  The dispute echoes last year's row over whether a British Airways employee could wear a cross and that of Shabina Begum, a Muslim excluded from her school in Luton for wearing a jilbab in defiance of school rules. She took the school to the High Court but lost her case.

  	Lydia Playfoot has messages of support from over 30 bishops and 15 politicians in her fight to wear the chastity ring

  Miss Playfoot, 16, from Horsham, West Sussex, has an impressive array of politicians and Church leaders backing her claims that Millais School, a non-denominational religious secondary school for girls in Horsham, has breached Article 9 of the Human Rights Act, which protects a person's right to practise their religion or beliefs.

  She is revising for 11 GCSEs while she waits to hear when her High Court judicial review case will be held. The £20,000 needed for the hearing has been largely raised from friends and individual donors.

  Although the school allows Muslim and Sikh pupils to wear headscarves, trousers and kara bracelets as a cultural expression of their religion, the chastity ring - a small band engraved with a biblical verse, 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4 - is not allowed because it is considered to be jewellery. The school also forbids the wearing of crosses and crucifixes.

  "I felt as if I was being picked on because I was a Christian," said Miss Playfoot. "People were around me from other faiths and they could wear trousers and bracelets and headscarves. There was no issue. It made me feel a bit upset."

  Miss Playfoot chose to wear the ring after an event held two years ago by an American Christian movement, The Silver Ring Thing, which promotes abstinence before marriage and has encouraged a growing number of adolescents to make "a pledge of chastity".

  The ring refers to the Biblical quote: "God wants you to be holy and completely free from sexual immorality. Each of you men should know how to live with his wife in a holy and honourable way".

  Initially it did not cause a stir at the school. But after a dozen other girls started wearing the rings Miss Playfoot was asked to remove hers on the grounds that it broke the school's no-jewellery policy and it could injure someone if she fell and used her hand to steady herself.

  When she refused she was placed "in isolation", missing classes and studying on her own. "I was surprised because the people who get put in isolation are caught smoking and are really rude and outrageous," she said. "I thought, why am I here? I didn't feel as if I'd done anything wrong."

  Her family claims that the school suggested she could attach the ring to her school bag, but if that was not acceptable she might have to look for a school that would allow her to wear it.

  Although Miss Playfoot has not worn the ring in classes since last April, she decided to take the school to the High Court "because I didn't want them to think that they had won. You can't treat Christians like this".

  Her father, Phil, 49, a minister in the non-denominational evangelical King's Church in Horsham, and her mother Heather, 47, said they felt "very disappointed" over the school ruling.

  So far Miss Playfoot has received messages of support from more than 30 bishops and 15 politicians, including Lord Tebbit, the former Tory party chairman, David Willetts, the shadow secretary of state for education, and the Tory MP Ann Widdecombe.

  The school declined to comment yesterday.

[GladesGuru]

“....and it could injure someone if she fell and used her hand to steady herself.”
Was that said with a straight face? Amazing!

What is even more amazing is the mind, if it can be so called, of the educrat.

An educator and its mind - it’s an ugly thing.

[ApplegateRanch]

Where in the Bible does it state that you MUST wear, carry, etc this or that, or you are not a Christian?

Try 2 Cor 6:16-18

Also, from McClintock & Strong’s Encyclopedia of the Bible:

“...in the New Testament idolatry came to mean, not only the giving to any creature or human creation the honor or devotion which belonged to God alone, but the giving to any human desire a precedence over God’s will (1 Cor 10:14; Gal 5:20; Col 3:5; 1 Peter 4:3).”

All I am saying is that we are not required to wear, or carry, or display any particular symbol symbol or item to be considered a Christian; nor, by being forbidden to do so, do we lose our Christianity or Salvation.

When one makes a fetish of having to do so, then it raises that created object to a status of necessity, and it becomes a fetish object, or (so to speak) an amulet or magical talisman; a de facto object of worship or veneration, which is a form of idolatry.

The difference with the Sikhs or Muslims is that they literally believe that being deprived of their items deprives them of their hope of salvation, and that to take them away is literally condemning them to their version of Hell.

[Pyro7480]

Ah, I misunderstood. I missed the “must.” Sorry about that.

[ApplegateRanch]

Re-reading your question, I think you misunderstood me.

Where these things, wrong as they are, are enable... (That should have been 'enabled')

I meant the forbidding by school or other officials of wearing of Christian symbols; that the officials get away with so forbidding because Christians can not honestly claim that, as an essential article of faith, that they must wear the Cross or the ring, etc.

For us, it is optional to wear such items, so the officials feel that it is legitimate to ban them, but wrong to ban what other religions consider essential.

[ApplegateRanch]

Now that we are finished misunderstanding each other’s misunderstandings...LOL

[Pyro7480]

For us, it is optional to wear such items, so the officials feel that it is legitimate to ban them, but wrong to ban what other religions consider essential.

True, but I still think the officials are doing this out of bias towards Christianity.

[ApplegateRanch]

Of course they are; but why they are doing it, and why they can say they are doing it, and get away with it aren’t the same thing.

[Sender]

Even a welded dagger stuck in one’s waistband presents a lot bigger hazard in a fall than a tiny finger ring.

[Coleus]

Western Civilization and Christianity will soon be a thing of the past in England and in other parts of Europe.

 

Teachers drop the Holocaust to avoid offending Muslims

[Stoat]

Even a welded dagger stuck in one’s waistband presents a lot bigger hazard in a fall than a tiny finger ring.

Agreed; and the confusing, contradictory messages that the whole matter sends to children (as well as adults) undermines the validity of other school rules.

[Shots]

They are already clashing big time just this week this happen in the Netherlands

http://www.nisnews.nl/public/270407_1.htm

School Scraps Nature Course As Pigs Enrage Muslim Pupils

Imagine that schools stopped teaching about farms to appease the muzzies

[jmcenanly]

Unless you’re wearing a jeweler’s loop, how do you tell that it is a chastity ring, rather than just a plain ring?

[Stoat]

Unless you’re wearing a jeweler’s loop, how do you tell that it is a chastity ring, rather than just a plain ring?

I would imagine that the ring's significance came up during the conversation(s) with the school administrators after the young lady was told to remove it, and she needed to justify her refusal.

I would similarly not have known of the religious significance of the Kara bracelets unless it came up as an issue such as this.

[little jeremiah]

The main point here is that chastity is a very bad No-No. Add to that chastity with a religious impetus and it is the ultimate No-No. Schools are supposed to convert everyone into a slut; can't have people promoting self control. Might infect other students.

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[wintertime]

Because the Left hates Christianity with a seething, visceral passion.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^6

The Leftists ( really Marxists) especially hate the Christian message of chastity. Remember, please, that the goal of the Marxist is to destroy the family, and chastity it essential to the preservation of the family.

If the Leftists ( Marxists) could get away with it, they would kill Christians. In the meantime, they merely make getting a job, or an education, in certain fields impossible for the Christian.

[ukie55]

How hypocritical. Allow both or ban both.

[Stoat]

How hypocritical. Allow both or ban both.

Agreed.  Common sense tends to fly out the window when Government and religion intersect.  The default Government position seems to be "always favor the non-Christian" .  They call it "tolerance" but I call it bigotry.