Evangelicals Against the Bleeding Obvious

"It is past time for evangelical Christians to remind our government and our society of perennial moral values, which also happen to be international and domestic laws. As Christians, we care about moral values, and we vote on the basis of such values. We care deeply about human-rights violations around the world. Now it is time to raise our voice and say an unequivocal no to torture, a practice that has no place in our society and violates our most cherished moral convictions..."

Suprisingly, (and its unfortunate that it would seem so), there is a growing consensus amongst Evangelicals: There is something indecent about torturing people. Its interesting to see conservative arguments in favor of basic human rights. It would have been nice had these arguments been made some 25 years ago when our proxies in Central America were perfecting the art of torture. But we should probably take what we can get.

The author makes 5 points regarding torture, all of which sound strangely quaint - but do form an unbroken line with the pro-life, "character" obsessed essence of the Christian Right.

1. Torture violates the dignity of the human being.
2. Torture mistreats the vulnerable and violates the demands of justice.
3. Authorizing torture trusts government too much.
4. Torture dehumanizes the torturer.
5. Torture erodes the character of the nation that tortures.

"...we say—and we say it even of detainees in the war on terror— [that] a human being sacred in God's sight, made in God's image, someone for whom Christ died. No one is ever "subhuman" or "human debris," as Rush Limbaugh has described some of our adversaries in Iraq..."

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