The Australian Christian Lobby has claimed that Labor’s hate speech laws would turn Australia into a “police state” by creating “thought crime” despite the fact the laws are directed towards threats of force or harm.

The Albanese government has substantially watered down the laws but is nevertheless facing a religious backlash, with the Catholic church and Christian Schools Australia claiming that the psychological harm definition will mean the view that sex is immutable will be outlawed as “hateful”.

The attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, introduced the hate speech bill in September proposing to extend existing offences of urging force or violence against specified targeted groups to protect people distinguished by sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status or disability.

The bill lowers the threshold for the offences, to punish a person who is “reckless” as to whether the violence urged will occur, rather than requiring that they intend it.

The bill also creates new offences for threatening to use force or violence against a group, or a member of a group, distinguished by race, religion, nationality, national or ethnic origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, intersex status, disability, and political opinion.

The ACL warned the bill had the “clear potential to serve as the instrument of viewpoint suppression on ideological grounds, even to criminalise political beliefs and expression contrary to a government-approved orthodoxy”.

The ACL argued that “non-physical harm” had been used to justify laws banning conversion practices, “changing the legal landscape concerning Christian and medical counselling, and other practices such as mere praying”.

“It is within the bounds of our expectation that this Bill is capable of misuse, asserted against speech which is said to ‘harm’ when it is simply unwelcome, because it contradicts particular belief systems,” its submission to the Senate inquiry said.

“For example, the beliefs of traditional faiths conflict with the theories of human identity proposed by queer theory and gender ideology.”

“The potential for this law, if enacted, to turn Australia into a police state in the future, in which the government of the day is able to suppress contrary viewpoints on the pretext of combatting ‘hate speech’ or ‘incitement to violence’, is concerning.”

The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference agreed that “threats” should be limited to “threats of physical force or violence” and not include psychological harms.

It noted that “a number of state-based laws allow sex to be freely chosen and changed at will, with some claiming that to disagree with that proposition is hateful”.

“It is not hateful to hold a view that people are created male and female, but unless the bill’s definitions of force or violence are restricted to physical harm, some groups may attempt to use the law to restrict the free speech of people or groups who hold this view.”

Christian Schools Australia also claimed there was a “real risk” the leader of a Christian school who instilled biblical principles on sexuality in school could be accused of “‘recklessly’ failing to prevent psychological harm to some students”.

The religious submissions to the legal and constitutional affairs committee inquiry, to report by 12 December, could make it harder for Labor to win Coalition support for the bill.

The Greens, LGBTQ+ equality groups and Jewish groups have criticised the bill for abandoning the government’s commitment to outlaw vilification.

The independent MP Allegra Spender submitted that the government should create “a new federal criminal offence covering serious vilification of individuals or groups on the basis of race, religion, or other protected attributes”.

Rainbow Families submitted that the bill “falls well short of offering meaningful protection for our families against the most egregious forms of hateful conduct”.

“Criminalising only explicit threats or violence leaves major gaps in protecting communities from the pervasive nature of hate speech,” it said.

“Many forms of hate speech that do not urge or threaten immediate force or violence still contribute to an atmosphere of hostility, fear, and marginalisation.”