“You can only be free if I am free” – Clarence Darrow

On Thursday, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul spoke at a closed-door prayer breakfast with about 50 evangelical pastors and thought leaders. Paul’s self-described libertarianism has often put him at odds with the evangelical community, which has some decidedly restrictive ideas about marriage and the family, and his visit was part of a larger pivot to the religious right as he prepares for the upcoming GOP primary.

As it turns out, Etch-a-Sketching your beliefs about the intersection of freedom and religion is harder than it looks.

In video obtained by the Christian Broadcasting Networks’ David Brody, Paul ran through a list of statements that put him squarely at odds with his “libertarian” roots:

“The First Amendment says keep government out of religion. It doesn’t say keep religion out of government.”

“We need a revival in the country. We need another Great Awakening with tent revivals of thousands of people saying ‘reform or see what’s going to happen if we don’t reform.’”

“There is a role for us (the federal government) trying to figure out a thing like marriage.”

Setting aside for the moment the fact that Paul is wrong about the First Amendment (more on that below), theocracy and libertarianism don’t mix. But for Rand Paul to try and fail to integrate the two should come as no surprise.

As I’ve written before, Paul has a pretty shaky grasp on what it means to be a libertarian. Like a college freshman who read the first chapter of Atlas Shrugged and followed Reason Magazine on Twitter, Paul seems to think that as long as you say “personal freedom,” “contracts” and “privacy” enough times then it doesn’t matter what policies you endorse; you’re for freedom and everyone else wants to force you into an Orwellian dystopia where the only choice the government lets you have is whether to vaccinate or abort your fetus.

That disconnect seems to be lost on Paul’s advisers, who in the wake of Paul’s comments at the prayer breakfast held firm that the soon-to-be candidate’s position on marriage hadn’t changed. As Paul advisor Doug Stafford told The Daily Beast:

Senator Paul does not want his guns or his marriage registered in Washington. He has said this repeatedly and consistently. Marriage is not a federal issue. It is an issue for state and local governments to deal with.

As Daily Beast reporter Olivia Nuzzi noted, “Thursday’s statement, then, would seem to suggest to anyone with eyes and ears and basic critical thinking skills that the Senator has had a change of heart.”

A change of heart, or at the very least a change of circumstance. The closer we get to the Republican primary the farther away Paul gets from whatever semblance of libertarian principles he nominally holds. From meeting with Sheldon Adelson to smooth over his positions on Israel, to signing Tom Cotton’s warmongering letter to Iran, to now opening the door for a federal intervention against marriage equality, Rand Paul has apparently learned a few lessons from his father’s failed presidential bids. Namely, that starting with “liberty” and working forward doesn’t work nearly as well as starting with “median GOP voter” and working backward.

If Rand Paul really was a libertarian, he would know that the only way to truly protect religious liberty in a secular liberal democracy is for the government to be completely indifferent to theological concerns as they pertain to public policy. Giving preference to one religious appeal opens the door for asymmetric preference and, by extension, discrimination on the basis of religion.

In fact, these concerns over asymmetric preference were the inspiration for the term “separation of Church and State” in the first place. The phrase comes from a letter written by then-President Thomas Jefferson to the Baptists of Danbury, Connecticut, who were seeking protection from, well, the Congregationalists of Danbury, Connecticut, as the state had established Congregationalism as its official religion. In assuring the Baptists that they enjoyed equal protection under federal law, Jefferson assured them that the First Amendment established “a wall of separation” between religion and government. As Baptists, they could go about being Baptists — and not-Congregationalists — as they pleased, and the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause guaranteed that federal government would protect that right and that right alone.

This makes it impossible for one to claim Constitutional inspiration for the claim that you can’t keep religion out of government. In order to adhere to the letter and spirit of the Constitution, you have to keep religion out of government.

It’s the only way to guarantee that one religion doesn’t gain undue privilege over another. Anyone who’s serious about freedom should be all for it.