Right-wing commentator and preacher Jody Hice, the Republican nominee in Georgia's 10th Congressional District, blamed the Penn State sex abuse scandal on the separation of church and state in a newly unearthed 2011 interview.

Speaking with Rick Wiles, host of End Times radio's Trunews program, Hice asserted that Jerry Sandusky's sex crimes were the product of a "morally bankrupt," secular culture.

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"The whole issue is a morally bankrupt nation is where we are," Hice told Wiles. "And you can go back decades as we first kicked the Bible out of schools and then prayer out of schools. And we’ve basically just been going downhill since then and you get what you get – you know, you kick God out."

As Right Wing Watch points out, Hice has also blamed the separation of church and state for the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 and linked evolution and reproductive rights to the mass shootings at Aurora, Colorado, and Virginia Tech.

Hice, who is heavily favored to win in his overwhelmingly Republican congressional district, is among the most inflammatory GOP candidates seeking office this year. The rabidly anti-gay Hice has written that “the homosexual movement” is “destroying America," and also believes that wives should obtain their husbands’ permission before entering politics. The fundamentalist Southern Baptist has also asserted that Islam is not a religion, but “a totalitarian way of life with a religious component" undeserving of First Amendment protection.

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Listen to Hice's comments below, via Right Wing Watch: