Hungary: The Prohibition of Homosexuality from School Curriculum.

The latest law bans LGBT people from featuring in TV shows for under-18s and educational material for schools. It effectively bans adoption by gay couples and ends legal recognition for gender changes, including people who have already made the switch.

The Fidesz party had a strong majority and was backed by the far-right Jobbik party. The legislation was passed by 157 votes to one, ignoring the pleas and boycotts opposition as human rights officials alike. It was impossible to oppose the main bill that penalises paedophilia, leaving room for the government to add multiple anti-LGBT amendments.

“The proposal is included in a government bill that punishes paedophilia. It says youngsters under 18 cannot be shown pornographic content or any content that encourages gender change or homosexuality”, Reuters news agency reports. It is incredibly misleading to claim that these bigoted laws are being introduced to protect children.

“There are contents which children under a certain age can misunderstand and which may have a detrimental effect on their development at the given age, or which children simply cannot process, and which could therefore confuse their developing moral values or their image of themselves or the world,” said a Hungarian government spokesperson.

These amendments were tagged on the laws targeting child abuse, on which the director of Hungary’s Amnesty International, Dávid Vig, commented: “Tagging these amendments to a bill that seeks to crack down on child abuse appears to be a deliberate attempt by the Hungarian government to conflate paedophilia with LGBTI people.” While European Parliament lawmaker Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield said: "Using child protection as an excuse to target LGBTIQ people is damaging to all children in Hungary."

Essentially, any media that promotes the LGBQ+ community cannot be shared with minors, but it's deeper than that. The law also dictates that sex education in schools can only be carried out by individuals and organisations listed in an official register. While this might sound ambiguous, a government spokesperson removes any doubt in the inherent bigotry of this law by saying that is a measure targeting

“organisations with a dubious professional background … often established for the representation of specific sexual orientations”.

Companies with advertisements that expressed solidarity with the community have faced boycott in the past, but now they are banned “if they are deemed to target under-18s”. Any movies or TV shows featuring gay characters, or even a rainbow flag, would be permitted only after the watershed, say campaigners who have studied the legislation.

András Léderer, at the Hungarian Helsinki Committee Europe, said: “This is a blanket approval to treat LGBT people with discrimination, with hatred. The idea that being gay poses a risk in itself to people under 18 is such a horrible vicious concept … It will have tragic effects on the mental wellbeing of young LGBT people.”

The third time Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seems to be gearing up for the 2022 re-election by passing an array of anti-LGBT laws. PM Orban does not limit its right-wing views of the LGBTQ community: he has been accused of tolerating anti-Semitism, restraining the right of immigrants and refugees, and politicising the courts and media, all in an attempt to “defend Hungary’s Christian values in a Europe gripped by left-wing liberalism”. His rule has been described as a “self-styled illiberal regime”.

Critics parallel these recent reforms to Russia's 2013 law that bans disseminating "propaganda on nontraditional sexual relations" among young Russians. Monday, 14th July, saw a mass rally outside the parliament with several rights groups have called on Fidesz to withdraw the bill.

In 2020, the Fidesz government condemned a Hungarian children's book, Wonderland Is For Everyone, which promotes tolerance of sexual and minority ethnic groups. It presented alternate versions of fairy tales featuring minorities, notably Roma and gay people. Fidesz labelled it "homosexual propaganda", saying it should be banned from schools, and denounced the book as “a provocative act” that had crossed a red line. The book was ordered to have a disclaimer that it contained “behaviour inconsistent with traditional gender roles”.

Fidesz’s main conservative ally in the European Union is Poland's ruling party Law and Justice (PiS), which has a similar stance on LGBTQ right. Budapest and Warsaw are both under formal EU investigation for alleged breaches of EU rule-of-law standards over some of their conservative reforms. Neither country recognises same-sex marriage, and there are many restrictions on adoption for same-sex couples. Hungary's constitution goes so far as to state that marriage is for heterosexual couples. The EU has been urged to raise the law with Hungary in the meeting in Luxembourg this week.

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