Editor’s Note: Frank Dorsey is a retired member of the Great Plains Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. He served churches in eastern Kansas for more than 40 years.

The Senate Intelligence Committee adopted its report on torture in December of last year. This report should be released to the public.

A national discourse by the citizenry, and within the halls of power, has not happened. It seems that many would just as soon forget that torture was used by the United States. There are those who deny that enhanced interrogation is torture, but the Constitution Project’s bipartisan Task Force on Detainee Treatment has found, after two years of research and in a 500-page report, “that it is indisputable that the United States used torture and cruel inhuman treatment of detainees.” In light of this terrible truth, it would be easier to forget that torture was used than to face it.

The painful memories of 9/11 have not been forgotten nor should they be. However, the use of torture in its aftermath has for the most part been pushed into a hidden corner of our national memory. It is Henri J.M. Nouwen, a Christian thinker, writer and teacher, who reminds us that painful, forgotten memories wound. As long as we deny that torture was used by our government, or we are allowed to forget it, our democracy will be wounded. If healing is to happen, this painful memory must be brought into the light of day so that public discourse may happen and the government be held accountable.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has produced a report of its own — 6,000 pages long and based on classified information the task force wasn’t privy to. The committee adopted the report back in December of last year, and it has yet to make the results public. The report is essential to understanding the realities of the torture our government committed in our name, and what must be done to ensure that torture is never used again.

The task force also found “no firm or persuasive evidence that (the use of torture) produced significant information of value.” Because the task force did not have access to classified information, its members were unable to completely put to rest claims made by supporters of torture arguing that classified documents show that torture was useful. This makes it even more important for the Senate Intelligence Committee to disclose its own findings.

Our nation must not hide from what has been done nor continue to maintain the hypocrisy of claiming to be ruled by law when breaking the

very tenets of international law and conventions of which we are a signatory. In 1994, the United States signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which binds our country to the following stipulation: “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture.”

The decisions of a democratic government affect every citizen. Moving on from an era of torture without a complete understanding of the horrors undertaken is a dangerous misstep to take, as a country that prides itself on following the moral high ground and setting a model for the international rule of law.

As a United Methodist Christian believing in the sacred value of every human being, I must oppose torture and work for its abolition. Therefore, I join with my brothers and sisters, representing hundreds of diverse religious faith-based organizations coming together through the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to urge the Senate Intelligence Committee to release its report on torture.