British girl banned from wearing chastity ring

British girl banned from wearing chastity ring

Associated Press Staff Reports
OneNewsNow.com
July 1, 2007

LONDON - A teenage girl banned from wearing a chastity ring in class has taken her case to Britain's High Court, arguing that her school had violated her religious freedom.

Lydia Playfoot, 16, a pupil at the Millais School in Horsham, about 40 miles south of London, wears a ring as a sign of her commitment to abstinence from sex until marriage. The school said the ring fell outside its uniform policy, which makes exceptions for Muslims wearing head scarves and Sikhs wearing steel bracelets.

The chastity rings do not form an integral part of the Christian faith, Headmaster Leon Nettley said. That violated Playfoot's freedom of religion, her lawyer Paul Diamond argued before the court.

"Secular authorities and institutions cannot be arbiters of religious faith," he said.

In a written submission to the hearing, Playfoot said her school did not afford equal rights to Christians as it did to other faiths.

"At my school, Muslims are allowed to wear headscarves and other faiths can wear bangles and other types of jewelry and it feels like Christians are being discriminated against," she said.

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