EASTON, Mass. — A summer camp in New York changed Jordan Payne's life forever.

That's where she heard a positive message for chastity from Denny Pattyn, director of the Silver Ring Thing, an abstinence program based in Pittsburgh.

“There were so many kids at this camp wearing silver rings,” Payne said.

Her curiosity brought her and a friend to Pittsburgh to see a program put on by the Silver Ring Thing.

“It's a hi-tech setting. They get the message out in a very funny sketch. It's like ‘Saturday Night Live.’ I thought it was going to be stupid, but it was awesome,” Payne said.

Now's she busy recruiting friends to come to a Silver Ring Thing production in nearby Boston.

“I tell them, ‘You don't have to make a decision.’ They usually say, ‘I don't think I can do it, but I'll come out and support you,” Payne said. “They don't think they're putting on rings, but I think their attitude will change and they'll put on rings.”

Not only is the abstinence program effective, but young people are receptive to the ideas, she said, because they've seen the dangers of sexual activity.

“I've seen so many of my friends who have had their hearts broken because guys take advantage of them,” Payne said. “People are sick of the consequences of sex and playing around. They're ready for something real.”

CDC Data

According to a new federal study, more teens are following Payne's lead.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said that in 1990 the number of virgins stood at 45.7%. But in 2001, that number grew higher than the halfway mark to 54.4%.

The information came in the CDC's annual Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey. The study noted that girls were more likely to be virgins (57.1%) than boys (51.5%).

“Latex is out, virginity is in,” said Leslee Unruh, director of the South Dakota-based Abstinence Clear-inghouse. “There are more virgins than sexually active teens. People are buying intimacy, not lust.”

Unruh said that some teens today are second-guessing their parents on sexuality — for the better. “They're saying, ‘Wait a minute. We do not buy into the lies of the ‘60s. Sex is dangerous.’”

The New York-based group SIECUS also heralded the news about chaste teens, but said that abstinence-only education would threaten the decline in teen sexual activity during the last 10 years.

“As we acknowledge the gains of the last decade in reducing the nation's teen pregnancy rate, it is time for the public health community, parents and policy-makers to seriously evaluate how to build upon and expand this positive trend,” said Tamara Kreinan, president of SIECUS, which stands for Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

“The massive funding of unproven abstinence-only-until-marriage programs may indeed threaten the decline in the nation's teen pregnancy rate witnessed over the last decade,” Kreinan said.

Wrong Message

Edwin Fuelner, a Catholic who is director of the Heritage Foundation, believes that SIECUS is sending the wrong message to teens.

He wrote in the Washington Times: “Guidelines developed by SIECUS, for example, recommend teaching children as young as 5 about masturbation, teaching 9-yearolds about oral sex and teen-agers about anal intercourse. (Hard to believe, I know, but it's true.) This despite the fact that sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in this country have reached epidemic proportions among young people. Some 3 million teen-agers contract STDs each year, afflicting roughly one in four teens who are sexually active.”

Mary Beth Bonacci, who has brought the chastity message to millions of students for the last 16years, also criticized Kreinan's comments.

“Let me see if I get this,” she said. “We've been funding abstinence programs over the last 10 years and we found a big drop in sexual activity.

“But we need to stop funding? If we keep doing what we're doing, we're going to get the opposite result?” asked Bonacci, who is also director of Colorado-based Real Love Productions.

“These people are getting more desperate in defending their positions,” she said about SIECUS. Bonacci said the decline would continue if organizations remained focused on funding abstinence programs.

“When I started this in ’86, [youth] had never heard this,” Bonacci said. “Now more and more students show me their commitment cards. More exposed are exposed to this life-affirming message. There's now this whole movement.”

Joshua Mercer writes from Washington, D.C.