(AgapePress) - An abstinence-only advocate says there is an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in the city of Philadelphia.

The more than 50,000 students who attend Philadelphia's public high schools are now being offered free STD tests. The free screenings and treatment started this month in response to tests revealing a chlamydia epidemic among the city's female teenagers. One in 12 city females between the ages of 15 and 19 are infected with the disease. However, pilot tests last year indicated the rate at two high schools was even higher, with one of every six girls infected.

William Devlin, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Urban Family Council, says after a decade of condom distribution in the Philadelphia School District, the program has proven to be an abject failure.

"This is another classic case of an inner-city school district, even when presented with the facts, that does not want the facts to get in their way," Devlin says. "They reject abstinence-only programs -- and they will continue the failed program of condom distribution."

Devlin says the program of free STD screenings and treatment is not a good strategy for the sixth-largest school district in the country.

"What the superintendent here in Philadelphia needs to do is to welcome Urban Family Council's abstinence-only program so we can implement a new sexual revolution in the schools of the Philadelphia School District," he says.

That program, Devlin says, encourages teenagers to wait until marriage to have sexual relations. "That's the new sexual revolution," he says.

Four years ago, the Urban Family Council presented an abstinence program to the Philadelphia School District that could be implemented in the city's 256 schools. The district rejected the curriculum because it uses the word "marriage," which the district said is "judgmental and non-inclusive."

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