In 1995, Denny Pattyn sent his wife down Mexico way to buy “a whole bunch of silver rings”. They were cheaper, he says, across the border. Then “for seven weeks we taught kids about sex and dating. At the end of it we said, ‘If you want to be abstinent, take one of these rings as a constant reminder and make a vow in front of God.’”

So many teenagers took the minister up on his offer that Pattyn, who had been inspired to action by the soaring teenage pregnancy rates in Yuma County, Arizona, quickly reduced the course to a three-hour format. Later, he added what he calls “awesome lighting”, “hilarious skits” and “high-energy music” to his faith-based abstinence message and rolled out the Silver Ring Thing concept through the rest of America.

These days, even teen singer Avril Lavigne is getting in on the act with an abstinence anthem, Don’t Tell Me (I’m Not Like that Girl, the One Who Gives It All Away).

Like rock’n’roll, if something catches fire in America you can be sure it will soon set Scotland ablaze. Even so, it’s a surprise that virginity is the latest trend to come out of the country which gave us dating in the dark. Next week, the Silver Ring Thing show, which claims so far to have persuaded about 23,000 US teenagers to save sex for marriage, is coming to Partick South parish church.

The Glasgow experience centres on the Pittsburgh-based couple, Deborah and Jared Ott, preachers who not only front up the message but live the lifestyle too. “Sex is created to be an awesome and fantastic thing — within marriage,” says Deborah, 26, who met her husband at college.

“I was helping out at the freshman orientation, doing a skit, and Jared was in the audience,” says Deborah. “Apparently, he said to his friend, ‘Who is that girl? I have to meet her — I’m going to marry her’. At first I was like ‘no way’, but I knew I’d marry him about two weeks after we started dating so when he proposed, up on stage at a concert six months later, I said yes immediately.”

Jared, 24, felt the same way. “I came from a Christian family and I’m glad I waited for my wife,” he says with charming simplicity. However, he goes on to expand on the health incentive which informed his moral choice. “During the show I give a talk called The Blessing Of Waiting, where I explain how no other girl is in my mind to compare with my wife, that nobody else has a piece of my life and that I don’t have to worry about things like sexually transmitted infections (STIs). I try to emphasise the fact that if I can do this, then other people can too.”

Supporters of the Silver Ring Thing will have no illusions about the challenge facing them in Britain, where recent research from Edinburgh University showed a third of 15-year-olds have had sex. For many young minds, abstinence is a non-starter.

“I don’t see the point,” says 17-year-old Lewis Ryder-Jones from Edinburgh. “Sex is a normal part of growing up. There might be the odd one or two agreeing to abstinence in Scotland, but on a general scale it doesn’t stand a chance.”

His friend, Lauren Mackie, 18, agrees. “I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with having sex if you’re in a long-term relationship. It seems old-fashioned to take a vow of abstinence, especially given that so many people decide not to get married at all these days.”

Movements such as the Silver Ring counter arguments like these by emphasising the supposed health risks of having sex and by asserting — against conventional wisdom — that condoms are not necessarily good for your health. The organisation’s website boldly states that “condoms not only do not eliminate the risk of contracting an STI, they do little to prevent many viral infections spread by skin-to-skin contact, especially HPV (genital warts) and herpes”, albeit beneath another statistic stating that “a British study found that HPV infects 46% of teenage girls after their first sexual intercourse”.

The fact that the two statements may be related is ignored. The only way to prevent contacting an STI, followers are told, is to abstain from sex completely.

Take away the supposed medical arguments against teenage sex, however, and the subtext to abstinence becomes darker: sexual shame. If a teenage girl (and most of the abstinence-pledgers are girls) makes a vow to stay “pure”, it suggests that those who choose to be sexually active are in some way “impure”.

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