Opposition to the Australian Government’s hate speech bill is growing, and that is good news. What is worrying, however, is how few of those opposing voices seem to recognise the religious assumptions that undergird the legislation itself.
“Hate” is not a neutral or self-evident category. It is a moral and ultimately religious one. In virtually every ethical system, hate is defined as the negation of the system’s highest good. It is the opposite of whatever that system treats as its supreme ideal, whether it’s the true God, a false god, an impersonal force, or some transcendent ideal. Hate is not simply bad behaviour; it is the inverse of the system’s most sacred value.
To legislate against “hate,” therefore, is not merely to regulate conduct, but to enforce a particular moral theology. It requires the state to define what the highest good is, what stands in opposition to it, and which expressions violate that sacred boundary. However secular the language, this is an act of religious governance.
Religion is unavoidable, and yet our government refuses to identify which religious system it’s enforcing on the public. If they want to criminalise hate, they need to define love, and if they want to define love, they need to identify their “god.”
Every system has a god. This is without exception. The “god” of a system is whatever sits at the source of law and moral authority. Where law derives its legitimacy, there the god of that system is found. When the state determines what is morally untouchable and criminalises its violation, it reveals the object of its highest allegiance.
As such, hate speech laws are not meaningfully different from blasphemy laws. They function the same way. Blasphemy laws protect a society’s sacred objects from verbal violation. Hate speech laws do the same, only the sacred object has changed. They are secularism’s answer to blasphemy law: enforcing reverence for the system’s ultimate values while denying that those values are religious at all.
The danger is not only that such laws restrict speech, but that they smuggle a theology into law while pretending to be neutral. That’s a far more profound threat than most critics appear willing, or able, to acknowledge.
