Don't think you're getting the protection you're getting.

The Silver Ring Thing, an evangelical "music and light sex-education show" operating on tax-payer funds, is enjoying unprecedented success with its abstinence-only message. Thanks to this program, which manipulates teens into taking the "silver ring pledge" to not have sex until marriage, millions of young people are convinced that abstinence is not necessarily impossible. Untold numbers are avoiding sex for years at a time. CBS news interviewed some youngsters about their pledge, and asked what their friends thought:

"They think we can't do it," says Amy. "That it's impossible. But it's not."

Amy's friends (plural) may think the program is ridiculous, but if Amy (singular) is currently committed to the program, then we can call it a success. And although Amy's boyfriend is not a virgin, they are both going to try their best to not have sex until marriage, or at least until a few weeks before their shotgun wedding at the courthouse.

According to Denny Pattyn, the Christian minister who created the Silver Ring Thing:

After three-and-a-half hours of giving them our best shot [on stage], 75 percent become convinced and put on the ring. Our goal actually is to create a culture shift in America. We want to see the concept of abstinence be the norm rather than the exception.

I think Pattyn has missed something important here. The concept of abstinence is already the norm in this country. It is the facts that never seem to live up to the ideals. You can "convince" people of all sorts of things at these "music and light" evangelical carnivals. You can get people to stand up out of their wheelchairs and dance. You can get people to commit to difficult weight-loss programs. You can convince them to become the best Amway salesmen in the country. But what really matters is what they do the day after the show.

There is one fundamental, permanent, irreconcilable flaw with abstinence-only education. I knew this when I was a teenager, a fact which has been confirmed through my years of life experience: sex is way better than abstinence. Tyring to convince young people that abstinence is best is like trying to convince them the Earth is flat.