Today’s Deseret News and Salt Lake Tribune have published the statement from the Utah Religious Community disavowing the use of torture by the U.S. The statement urges our legislators to pass
H. R. 2863 (“Anti-Torture Provisions” – amendments to the Defense Appropriations Act of 2006).
There is one prominent religious community visibly missing from the list of signatories: The Church of Latter Day Saints. This church continues to refrain from taking a stand on this and other issues such as war itself.
On torture, the statement contains:
Torture, regardless of circumstance, humiliates and debases torturer and tortured alike. Torture turns its face against the biblical truth that all humans are created in the image of God (Gen. 1:26, 27). It denies the preciousness of human life and the dignity of every human being by reducing its victims to the status of despised objects, no matter how noble the cause for which it is employed.
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Deanna Dee-Dee Taylor 