"These are groups that have detailed position papers on everything, including stem-cell research and same-sex unions, yet only two answered my query. Both of them defended the Bush administration's policies on torture. No organization associated with the religious right has yet, to my knowledge, summoned the will to issue a statement of unequivocal opposition to the use of torture.

These are people who claim to be "pro-life" and who profess to hear a "fetal scream." Yet they turn a deaf ear to the very real screams of fully formed human beings who are tortured in our name.

The religious right's indifference toward the ethical issues surrounding war and torture is hardly befitting those who designate themselves the moral arbiters of our society. If my fellow evangelicals aspire to be the conscience of America, they had better liberate themselves from their captivity to the Republican Party and to the morally bankrupt policies of the Bush administration."

Torture, however, isn't the only morally problematic issue that leaders of the Christian and religious right are currently ducking.... [editorial note: I originally wrote this post in October 2006 but now, with revelations that the US use of torture originated in the White House, it has again become relevant. The section below refers to an older scandal.] One particularly blaring example lies in the silence of Christian right leaders on the issue of forced abortions and sex-slavery in the Marianas Islands. Though the grim conditions that meet Chinese women who travel to the Marianas to work in garment industries has long been publicized, the Christian right has largely been silent about GOP profits derived from practices in the Marianas garment industry that violate many of the moral and ethical standards the Christian right professes to hold.

Talk To Action writer moiv, in The Religious Right's 800-Pound Abortion Gorilla, details the refusal of leaders on the Christian right to acknowledge the conditions that have long prevailed in the Marianas and which include, for garment workers there, a de-facto regime of forced abortions. Lately, such refusals have provided powerful ammunition for Democratic challengers seaking to oust GOP incumbents in the November 2006 election ( see Christian Right Avoidance Of GOP's '$ From Abortion and Sex-Slavery' Scandal Fuels Dem. Attack Ads. )

Now, in the latest of what sometimes seems to be an endless procession of tawdry GOP scandals, Republican congressman Tom Foley's resignation over sexually explicit emails sent to a Congressional page illustrates what might be characterized as a pervasive culture of moral hypocrisy in the GOP. See ThinkProgress's Foley Coverup Timeline