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Katherine Harris: Separation of church and state 'a lie'

"...if you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," she says in interview.

By Jim Stratton
Orlando Sentinel
August 25, 2006, 11:30 AM EDT

U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris said this week that the separation of church
state is "a lie," that God did not intend for the United States to be a
"nation of secular laws" and that a failure to elect Christians to
political office will allow lawmaking bodies to "legislate sin."

In an interview with the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of
the Florida Baptist State Convention, Harris described her faith,
saying it animates "everything I do," including her votes in Congress.

She warned that if voters do not send Christians to office, they risk
creating a government that is doomed to fail.

"If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public
scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians, then in essence
you are going to legislate sin," she told interviewers, citing abortion
and gay marriage as two examples of that sin.

Doing so, she said, "will take western civilization, indeed other
nations because people look to our country as one nation as under God and
whenever we legislate sin and we say abortion is permissible and we say
gay unions are permissible, then average citizens who are not
Christians, because they don't know better, we are leading them astray and it's
wrong..."

Harris said that Americans "have internalized" the "lie" that church
and state must not be mixed. In reality, she said, "we have to have the
faithful in government" because that is God's will.

Separating religion and politics is "so wrong because God is the one
who chooses our rulers," Harris said. "And if we are the ones not
actively involved in electing those godly men and women," then "we're going to
have a nation of secular laws. That's not what our founding fathers
intended and that's (sic) certainly isn't what God intended."

Harris, a Republican from Longboat Key, is running against Orlando
attorney Will McBride, retired Adm. LeRoy Collins and developer Peter
Monroe in the GOP Senate primary. McBride and Collins also did interviews
with Florida Baptist Witness. Monroe did not.

Both Collins and McBride, a lay minister and son of a pastor, say their
faith is an important part of their lives, but Harris' responses most
directly tie her role as a policy maker to her religious beliefs

Copyright (c) 2006, South Florida Sun-Sentinel