Australia is preparing to introduce a National Hate Crime Database, part of a broader government effort to combat “antisemitic” content, particularly online.

According to Jillian Segal, the Australian government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, the database is already in development. “A National Hate Crime Database, which has already been announced by the government, is in the process of being established, which will improve reporting, monitoring, and transparency,” Segal said.

The government is also aiming to strengthen hate speech laws and embed antisemitism education into the national school curriculum.

Segal said, “We will look at whether it is now necessary to strengthen hate crime legislation, including provisions relating to, not only incitement and vilification and prohibitive symbols, which we have, but actual hatred and the speaking of hatred and the demonstrating of hatred. We need to look at this…”

This isn’t about merely stopping acts of violence or preventing incitement to commit crimes. It’s about policing hatred — a feeling. An emotion. And now we have a government that believes it not only has the right, but the responsibility, to monitor and control how the public expresses their sentiments.

Critics of these policies will, of course, be accused of “defending hate” and “condoning antisemitism.” But that’s obviously not the point. The issue here isn’t whether people should have the freedom to hate Jews. The issue is who decides what counts as hate, and whether the government should have the authority to define it, police it, and punish it.

Today, it’s antisemitism. Tomorrow, it could be quoting Scripture. Let’s not pretend that’s not a very real possibility.

We’ve already watched politicians and mainstream media reduce deeply-held Christian beliefs about marriage, sexuality, and gender to “love vs hate.” The entire “Same-Sex Marriage” debate in Australia was framed in those terms. If you affirmed biblical teaching, you could be labelled “hateful.” If you dared to quote Jesus Himself, you could be accused of spreading hate speech. In fact, we’ve already seen multiple cases of Christians hauled before the courts for “hate crimes” relating to LGBTQ issues.

Remember the uproar from our politicians following the decision to award Margaret Court the nation’s highest honour, an Order of Australia, because she expressed a Biblical view of sexuality?

Or the reaction to rugby player Israel Folau quoting 1 Corinthians 6:9 on his personal Instagram account and preaching a sermon in his church linking natural disasters to God’s disapproval?

The state has slowly but surely pushed the church out of public life, only to replace it with itself — a secular institution now assuming the role of moral arbiter. Everyone was so preoccupied with fears of the church becoming the state that they didn’t notice the state becoming the church. And once the state has the power to define “hate,” it will inevitably begin to prosecute heresy.

This is a highly religious task. It involves dealing with abstract moral oughts and ought nots, and then policing those oughts and ought nots through the force of the law. This is not morality as defined by God, but as defined by the powerful. They have already redefined love. They’re now in the process of redefining hate.

It’s worth noting that “hatred” itself is not necessarily antithetical to Christianity. The same Bible that commands us to love also commands us to hate (Rom. 12:9; Ps. 97:10; 11:3; Am. 5:15). In fact, you cannot biblically love unless you biblically hate.

But in a culture that prides itself on tolerating everything, except the intolerance of evil, the hatred of many things God hates is rebranded as a “hate crime.” But Christian love demands hate. To love your brother is to hate anything evil that might harm him. If you love children, you must hate child abuse. Anything less than hatred at this point is not love. Jesus Himself said the world hated Him because He testified that its works were evil (John 7:7). He wasn’t crucified for preaching niceties, but for confronting sin. But true love hates what is evil. And evil should be exposed, according to the Apostle Paul, not coddled or affirmed.

The problem is, our leaders no longer look to the Bible as the standard of morality. Instead, the state has declared itself the moral compass of the people, and now it demands your submission. As such, the concern isn’t whether people should have the “freedom to hate their enemies.” The concern is that the same government that is already labelling basic Christian doctrine as “hate” is now building a system to monitor, catalogue, and punish those guilty of heresy.