I read this news story on Monday, and while I realize this Bush lapdog has no shot in hell of being elected to the Senate, I was still infuriated that someone in our government would either be so incredibly ignorant of the founding principles of this country, or so willing to lie about them in a futile attempt to garner more votes.

MIAMI, Florida (AP) -- U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a religious journal that separation of church and state is "a lie" and God and the nation's founding fathers did not intend the country be "a nation of secular laws."
The Republican candidate for U.S. Senate also said that if Christians are not elected, politicians will "legislate sin," including abortion and gay marriage.
Harris made the comments -- which she clarified Saturday -- in the Florida Baptist Witness, the weekly journal of the Florida Baptist State Convention, which interviewed political candidates and asked them about religion and their positions on issues.
Separation of church and state is "a lie we have been told," Harris said in the interview, published Thursday, saying separating religion and politics is "wrong because God is the one who chooses our rulers."
"If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin," Harris said.

By the way, you may remember Katherine Harris as the person who halted to Florida Recount during the 2000 presidential election, when she was Florida�s Secretary of State. I don�t even know where to begin�. I guess the biggest irony in all of this is that the founding fathers specifically intended this to be a nation of secular laws to prohibit nut-jobs like her from legislating religion. Oh now far we�ve come. If he were alive today, Thomas Jefferson would surely take a copy of the 1st Amendment and slap Katherine Harris upside the head with it and promptly vomit after witnessing the state of the nation he helped found. I guess I just find it abhorrent that someone would actually say that �God is the one who chooses our rulers.� If that is the case, I think one could argue that God has a really twisted sense of humor. And just for the record, here is an excerpt of a letter Thomas Jefferson sent to a group of Virginia Baptists back in 1808- when HE was President:

Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person's life, freedom of religion affects every individual. State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

People like Katherine Harris embody all that is wrong with zealots- they view religion as a zero-sum scenario. �Vote Christian, or you�re voting for sin.� �You�re either with us, or you�re against us.� �A vote for democrats is a vote for the terrorists.� The utter intolerance of their views and beliefs leaves no room for anyone with differing ideas or faiths, and they use fear as their most powerful weapon. They don�t seem to understand or don�t seem to believe that different people with different religions can live together while respecting each others differences. I wonder ho many Jewish politicians want to bury their feet up her ass? And speaking of sin, I am still trying to figure out why exactly gay marriage is to be so feared. They keep saying it�s an affront to the sanctity of marriage in general- as if a gay married couple will move next door to my house and barge in the front door while my wife and I are having a quite dinner and proceed to hop onto the dining room table and reenact a scene from �Anal Intruder�. By doing so, they would emotionally scar my wife and I so badly that our marriage would be forever ruined, and our children would then grow up to be flaming butt pirates who trick themselves out as gay prostitutes roller skating their way down Hollywood Boulevard wearing neon orange short shorts and mesh halter tops. If these people are seriously worried about the sanctity of marriage, wouldn�t they be trying to make divorce more difficult instead of preventing people who actually want to get married from doing so? Of course not, because they really aren�t interested in that- what they are interested in is praying on the ignorance and fear of intolerant bigots to get themselves elected to another term.

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