Family Research Council President Tony Perkins spoke yesterday on his radio show “Washington Watch” with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) about a sex trafficking bill which sparked outrage after Republican leaders included an anti-abortion provision in the otherwise uncontroversial legislation. During the program, a caller suggested that the government combat trafficking by following Levitical law which, according to the caller, “requires the death of the people who enslave or the people who fund the enslavers.”

Perkins responded to the caller by lamenting that the separation of church and state has contributed to sex trafficking in America.

“It’s shocking that we could treat another human being in this way, absolutely shocking, but it’s a reflection of the moral condition of our country and society as a whole. Not just our country, it’s happening everywhere,” he said. “If you think — you know when people say, ‘oh things aren’t that bad, we don’t need religion, we don’t need God,’ when you take God, the creator, out of the equation, you kick the Ten Commandments out, you remove prayer, the Bible, you remove all of that from the public square and it’s quarantined to churches for an hour or two a week, this is what you get.”

He went on to say that trafficking survivors are among “the consequences of this godless agenda.”