Although Heritage of Rhode Island’s “Right Time, Right Place” abstinence-based curriculum includes sections on personal values, the overall message is that teenage sexuality is always a negative behavior.
It has chapters like “My Body — Sexually Transmitted Infections/Diseases” and a dice game indicating the only possible consequences of sexuality activity as bacterial infection, herpes, HIV, PHV, Pregnancy/ Fatherhood, and “Emotional Consequences/Regret.” The curriculum also teaches that sexuality outside of marriage means disease, death, and depression — if not demoralization of the human spirit and devolution of the human species.
This isn’t surprising, considering how the impetus for Heritage of Rhode Island’s recent abstinence initiative, like those in other states, originated not locally, but from conservative Christian ministries. Heritage’s history, in fact, seems indistinguishable from executive director Christopher Plante’s path through such groups, most recently with the South Carolina-based SIM (Serving in Mission) organization. After his return from youth work in East Africa, Plante, a Rhode Island native, reestablished himself as the head of Heritage of Rhode Island.
Financially, the local group has benefited from the Bush administration’s sweepstakes: promote abstinence-only education — with an emphasis on married heterosexuality and no sex as the only safe sex — and watch the money flow in. The vast bulk of Heritage of RI’s finances come from a $400,000 three-year federal Community Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) grant.
To date, Heritage of RI has spent the money on highway billboards and open houses during which it promotes its mission, encouraging parents to lobby school administrators to adopt “Right Time, Right Place.”
This use of small, local parental lobbies — about 15 individuals, all together, in Warwick — allows Heritage to identify its program as a “grassroots revolution,” rather than a federally scripted, evangelical Christian initiative. Yet these advocates bypass PTAs and other forums while promoting their lesson plan.
Though vehemently denying legal and formal connection to religious groups or conservative institutions, Plante has said that Heritage of RI, incorporated in 2004, is modeled on — but not affiliated with — South Carolina’s Heritage Community Services, a conservative Christian organization aimed at “combating the cultural emphasis on sex and sensuality,” especially among teenagers and young adults.
While Heritage has amended some of its more egregious lesson plans, including conservative gender stereotyping and scientific misinformation, the conservative Christian agenda’s aura still burnishes the pedagogy of “Right Time.”
Does it matter? Will such ideologically tailored curricula even register in a teenage world swamped with the ubiquity of soft-core fashion pitches, Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace, and the celebrity sexploits of the moment?
As the local debate over “Right Time, Right Place” played out, the New York-based Guttmacher Institute released a report, indicating — to the surprise of no one — that 95 percent of Americans have engaged in premarital sex. Rather than fostering unrealistic expectations, groups like Heritage of Rhode Island should encourage young people to become more self-aware without being frightened in the process.
