The conservative government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán passed legislation this week to outlaw LGBTQ+ pride parades and other similar demonstrations in Hungary as a part of its broader effort to protect children from lewd content and far-left gender ideology.
This week, the governing Fidesz party of Prime Minister Orbán amended the law on the right to assembly to prohibit public demonstrations deemed to endanger the safety of child development, Magyarnemzet reported.
“In Hungary, a child’s right to healthy physical, mental, intellectual, and moral development comes first. We won’t let woke ideology endanger our kids,” Orbán wrote on X.
Explaining the rationale behind the legislation, Fidesz spokesman Tamás Menczer said that “Pride and child protection are not compatible!” adding that “everyone who has watched only a few photos and videos of previous Prides knows this.”
The Budapest Pride organisation reacted with indignation to the legislation, writing on Facebook: “This is not child protection, this is fascism. Pride is not just a protest. Pride is a movement.
“The government is trying to limit the peaceful protests with critical voices by putting a minority in the crossroads. That’s why we will fight as a movement so that every Hungarian can protest freely!”
Leftist lawmakers of the Momentum Movement (MOMO) party also raged over the bill, with several MPs setting off smoke bombs in the Hungarian parliament, sparking health concerns as they are toxic and not meant for indoor use.
The leader of Orbán’s Fidesz party in the parliament, Máté Kocsis, said that “it is quite obvious what the game is about, and this pro-Pride arson was only the precursor of what foreign financiers are preparing for.”
“Interestingly, they never came out against war or illegal migration with such militant means,” he added.
The dispute comes as Hungary is entering campaign season for next year’s parliamentary elections, which will decide whether Prime Minister Orbán, already the longest-serving elected head of government in the EU, will be given another mandate to lead the country.
There have been suggestions that the legislation to ban Pride parades was intended to draw out Péter Magyar on the issue. Magyar, a member of the Hungarian political aristocracy who is widely expected to be Orbán’s primary challenger in the elections, has attempted to avoid culture war topics like LGBT while casting himself as a centrist neo-liberal in order to gain votes from the left and the right.
It remains to be seen, however, if Magyar will be able to continue to avoid hot-button issues surrounding gender, given that one of his top advisors, Kriszta Bódis, has produced films and books promoting LGBT ideology.
While Magyar has initially attempted to dismiss the Pride parade ban as an election tactic, the Orbán government has consistently made the issue a key element of its agenda, putting itself at odds with other EU states and Brussels itself, which has imposed hefty fines on Hungary over laws restricting the promotion of LGBT ideology on children’s television and in schools.
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