Religious leaders rally to support ban on torture

[struggle4progress]

By Ashley Gipson
Religion News Service
Article Last Updated: 11/14/2008 03:49:34 PM MST

Washington » Hundreds of people rallied outside the White House on Wednesday as religious leaders from a number of faiths met with members of Congress while also urging President-elect Barack Obama to sign an executive order banning torture.

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT)'s "Day of Witness" included a procession of people carrying anti-torture banners, many of which had been hanging in their houses of worship, that ended at the White House.

"At this moment of hope, we call audaciously for moral leadership that will be welcomed throughout the world as the U.S. government and our people resume our aspiration to be guided through the night with a light from above," said Rabbi Gerry Serotta, chair of the group Rabbis for Human Rights ...

"The use of torture by the United States in recent years, and our refusal to renounce its use, has diminished us as a nation not only in the eyes of our own citizens, but in the eyes of the world," said the Rev. John Thomas, president and general minister of the United Church of Christ ...

http://www.sltrib.com/faith/ci_10986365

[Booster]

1. Me thinks this is a smokescreen to change the subject on Prop.8.

[struggle4progress]

2. Religious Leaders Urge US to Ban Torture (WaPo 2006)

By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, June 13, 2006; Page A04

Twenty-seven religious leaders, including megachurch pastor Rick Warren, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel and Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick of Washington, have signed a statement urging the United States to "abolish torture now -- without exceptions."

The statement, being published in newspaper advertisements starting today, is the opening salvo of a new organization called the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, which has formed in response to allegations of human rights abuse at U.S. detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba ...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/12/AR2006061201484.html