Conservatives spent much of their time at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) bashing political consultants. Perhaps they knew something we didn’t. In today’s Politico, Alexander Burns reports that the majority of the Republican consulting class is not-so-secretly hoping that the Supreme Court will the issue the broadest possible rulings in favor of gay marriage. Here’s a sample:

“It removes the issue from the Democratic playbook of fundraising scare tactics and political demagoguery and breaks their usual messaging dynamic of, ‘You’re a beleaguered minority; let us protect you from the evil GOP — oh, and here’s your absentee ballot,’” said Florida-based Republican consultant Rick Wilson.

Wilson continued: “Democrats won’t be as happy explaining to gay business owners why Obamacare is crushing them; why the regulatory behemoth in D.C. is burying them in red tape; and why the American economy is still faltering. Republicans take an issue out of the federal domain and let states, churches and society handle it, and let’s stick to a message of growth and opportunity for every American.”

One top Republican pollster, who requested anonymity in order to speak bluntly, said that Republicans will struggle to connect with many swing voters as long as they’re perceived as the party of cultural retrenchment.

“We can’t continue to fight a losing battle on gay marriage and gay rights, and if we need the Supreme Court to help in that regard, so be it,” the pollster said…

…Republican pollster Brock McCleary said that from a purely political perspective, it would be helpful to the GOP to see gay marriage taken out of the federal debate altogether — something only the Supreme Court could achieve in the near term…

…California-based Republican consultant Reed Galen compared the gay marriage issue to immigration and said there’s an imperative to resolve the issue relatively quickly because “the longer the GOP debates the issue internally and in the media, the longer it will take to repair relationships.”

“I think it is the conventional wisdom among Republicans who believe the change in the party has to be policy-based as well as image-based,” Galen said.

Unsurprisingly, these consultants are perceived as the “libertarian” enemy by Erick Erickson and the social conservatives at the Red State blog. Erickson’s (mostly) paranoid rant seeks to educate these consultants about progressives’ nefarious plans to utterly destroy religion.

I think this is probably an academic argument because I doubt the Court will issue the kind of broadly pro-marriage rulings that the Republican consultants desire. What’s more interesting is the seam this has opened up on the right. Also interesting is how the cultural conservatives are approaching this. Overall, despite his paranoia, Mr. Erickson offers some sound advice. Social conservatives don’t want their opposition to gay marriage to carry the same social opprobrium as standard issue white supremacy in the post-Civil Rights Era, so they should focus on protecting their religious freedom to discriminate. I’d like to note for the record that even in the post-Civil Rights Era, churches may and sometimes do refuse to allow black people to attend, let alone get married to one of their white parishioners. So, Erickson is wrong when he says “We will see churches suffer the loss of their tax exempt status for refusing to hold gay weddings.” But, what happens when a religious school refuses to accept a student who has gay parents? Isn’t it vitally important that religious schools retain the ability to punish the child for the “sins” of their parents?

More seriously, there is a concern among social conservatives that their views on homosexuality will be viewed as worse than misguided but as somehow illegal. They don’t want to be treated as pariahs and shunned from polite society, but they also want to be able to discriminate as broadly as possible. Erickson makes this clear by his concern about keeping gay parents away from religious schools. He also makes it clear when he complains about florists and bakers not being able to deny services to gays.

What seems clear is that a lot of social conservatives define “religious freedom” more broadly than they should. Most of “religious freedom” pertains to what you believe. As far as it pertains to what you do, that means the freedom to participate in certain religious rites and ceremonies. It doesn’t mean that you can kick blacks and gays out of your flower shop because their very existence offends you.

Of course, your church is another matter.