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Purity ring girl sues school |
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A Christian teenager is suing her school for discriminating against her faith. 16-year-old Lydia Playfoot of Millais School, Horsham, West Sussex has said that her school’s ban of the chastity ring which she wears as an abstinence plegde is unfair. Lydia says that her Muslim and Sikh classmates are allowed to wear symbols of their religion and there are even students with tongue studs in the school but “the girls know that the school does not afford equal rights to Christians". "I think in the society we live in today with lots of teenage pregnancies and STDs, something like this is important,” she says. "The real reason for the extreme hostility to the wearing of the purity ring is the dislike of the message of sexual restraint. The ring was a demonstration of my Christian faith and values, based on the Bible — which clearly teaches that sex outside marriage is wrong and not God’s best for us.”The school’s head teacher Leon Nettley told the court he did not consider the ring a “requirement” of Lydia’s faith but merely a way of declaring her views. “If we allow rings symbolising one message, other pupils will demand to wear jewellery symbolising other messages.”The band worn by Lydia is a symbol of the 'Silver Ring Thing' evangelical movement, which started in the US and has grown to be a worldwide phenomenon. Thousands of other young people worldwide wear the ring to pledge their sexual abstinence before marriage. A ruling is due in six weeks.
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