Wearing casual business attire and a big Western belt buckle, the private college leader from Louisiana spoke fervently Tuesday night about what he called the federal government's assault on religious liberties. 

Taking place at the Casper Petroleum Club, the 90-minute talk was the last stop in Roberts' summer lecture series, which is called "Rebuilding The Wall of Separation: The Future of Religious Liberty in America."

The talk, delivered to some 50 people, came months after the relatively new non-accredited school made local and national headlines after deciding to reject about $700,0000 in federal financial aid. The school was established in 2007, becoming Wyoming's second four-year college.

Roberts and board members decided against federal financial aid in February so that the school wouldn't have to comply with regulations such as Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in federally funded education programs. Roberts feared that an expansion of the law would pose a conflict with the religious mission of the school. 

He compared the country to "a sick" or "terminally ill" patient.

"We have a corrupted understanding of the separation between church and state," he said.  

"This should concern all Americans," he added. "If the government can abridge one law, then all of our natural rights can be abridged." 

Roberts told attendees the First Amendment had been inverted to protect the state from the church instead of the other way around, which, he argued, is what the nation's founders intended. 

"In a lot of media organizations over the past four days we have seen evidence of a corrupted understanding -- or really an outright perversion" of the First Amendment, Roberts said, referring to the Supreme Court's ruling legalizing same sex marriage last week. 

Roberts said that the decision represented a failure for the Catholic Church and warned the audience that even some recent successes such as the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling last year should be taken with a grain of salt. The ruling, which exempted "closely held" corporations from paying for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act, was hailed by many churchgoers as a victory.

Yet Roberts cautioned that it applied only to private businesses. Nonprofit organizations such as religious colleges could lose their tax-exempt statuses in the future, he said.

Before Roberts stepped down from the podium, he implored people in the room to vote, to write letters to the editor and to tell their Catholic stories in order to change the direction of public discourse. He received a standing ovation.

Bern Haggerty, a Laramie attorney and Catholic, said Tuesday that it was important to note that the brand of Catholicism practiced at Wyoming Catholic College is just "one faction." 

"That would not be consistent with the majority of views of Catholics in America," he said. "It's an outspoken faction that happens to control the leadership of the Catholic college in Wyoming ... It's a minority faction." 

"The religious freedom argument is red herring," he continued. "There's nothing in the Catholic catechism that says Catholic business people have to fire their gay employees; there's nothing in the Catholic catechism that says Catholic landlords have to evict their transgender or gay tenants."

Haggerty said he thinks the goal of the church should be social justice.

"I don't think it should be persecution," he said. "My observation is that the only people that Jesus persecuted were money lenders and tax collectors, not disadvantaged or disfavored people in society." 

Rep. Ken Esquibel, D-Cheyenne, who is also a Catholic, said that although he personally agrees with some of the more socially conservative values of the church, he doesn't think that those values should negatively affect others in the community or play a part in government. 

"It's easy for me to separate that because I'm not the higher power that makes that judgment; I'm an elected official," he said.

"Who a person chooses to love is within that person's heart, not within the Bible, and it's not within the Constitution."