WASHINGTON - March 24 - The Rhode Island Department of Education has banned from public schools an abstinence-only-until-marriage program found to violate students' rights, embrace sexist stereotypes, isolate GLBT youth, and, in accompanying materials, promulgate religious views.

"We've known for some time that abstinence-only is bad science, bad policy, and a blatant violation of medical ethics and basic human rights," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth. "And as more people find out what is being taught and what is being censored in these ineffective programs, more and more of these 'stay pure or we don't care about you' programs will be banned from public schools."

A letter sent last week by Education Commissioner Peter McWalters issued a directive to schools not to use the program or accompanying materials, and also revealed that the classes taught by Heritage of Rhode Island were never approved by state authorities. The Commissioner announced his office would create a panel to review the HIV/AIDS curricula of every school district in the state.

"Enough is enough. For too long these abstinence-only programs have operated without a hint of oversight," said Wagoner. "At least at the state level, this trend is changing, and public health officials couldn't be more pleased."

Recently, the Society for Adolescent Medicine, in one of the most exhaustive reviews to date of government-funded abstinence- only programs like that of Heritage of Rhode Island, rejected current administration policy that promotes abstinence as the only sexual health prevention strategy for young people.

Any decision to continue using abstinence-only programs is even more difficult to defend, given that:

-- Curricula used by a majority of abstinence-only-until- marriage programs provide false and misleading information, according to the House of Representatives' Committee on Government Reform - Minority Staff;

-- State evaluations from across the country show these programs don't work to delay sexual initiation;

-- The nation's most trusted medical organizations, such as the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM), all support comprehensive sex education.

"Now it's time for Congress to declare an immediate moratorium on federal funding for these programs. It is a national scandal that we have already spent over $1.1 billion of taxpayers' dollars on programs that don't work and that censor vital public health information for young people. It is time to restore sanity and common sense to our public health policy," concluded Wagoner.

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