Hungary passes legislation to ban public LGBTQ+ events: ‘Dismantling democracy’
Hungary’s parliament on Monday passed an amendment to the constitution that allows the government to ban public events by LGBTQ+ communities, a decision that legal scholars and critics call another step toward authoritarianism by the populist government🍎.
The amendment, which requi⛄red a two-thirds vote, passed along party lines with 1♌40 votes for and 21 against.
It was proposed by the ruling Fidesz-KDNP coalition led by populist Prime Mi💞nister Viktor Orbán.
Ahead of the vote — the finaꦇl sꦓtep for the amendment — opposition politicians and other protesters attempted to blockade the entrance to a parliament parking garage.
Police physically removed demonstrators, who had used zip ties to bind t🅠hemse🧜lves together.
The amendment declares that children’s rights to moral, physical, and spiritual development supersede any right other than the right to life, including peaceful ♍assembly.
Hungary🙈’s contentious “child protection” legislation prohibits the “depiction or promotion” of homosexuality to minors aged under 18.
The amendment codifies a law fast-tracked through parli🔥ament in March that bans public events held by LGBTQ+ communities, including the popular Pride event in Budapest that draws thousands annually.
That law also allows authorities to use facial recognition too🦂ls to identify people who attend prohibited events — such as Buda❀pest Pride — and can come with fines of up to 200,000 Hungarian forints ($546).
Dávid Bedő, a lawmaker with t✱he opposition Momentum party who participated in the attempted blockade, said before the vote that Orbán and Fidesz for the past 15 years “have been dismantling democracy a🦹nd the rule of law, and in the past two or three months, we see that this process has been sped up.”
He said as elections appr🐎oach in 2026 and Orbán’s party lags in the polls behind a popular new challenger from the opposition, “they will do everything in their power to stay in power.”
Opposition lawmakers used airꦐ horns to disrupt the vote, which continued af👍ter a few moments.
Hungary’s governm🔜ent has campaigned against LGBTQ+ communities in recent years and argues its “child protection” policies, which forbid the availability to minors of any material that mentions homosexuality, are needed to protect children from what it calls “woke ideology” and “gender madnes💦s.”
Crit൩ics say the measures do little to protect children and are being used to distract from more serious problems facing the country and to mobilize Orbán’s right-wing base ahead o꧒f elections.
“This whole endeavor which we see launched by the government, it has nothing to do with children’s rights,” said Dánel Döbrentey, a lawyer 🐻with the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, calling it “pure pro🙈paganda.”
Constitution recognizes two sexes
The new amendment also states that the constitution recognizes two sexes, male and female, an expansion of an 𒆙earlier amendment that prohibits same-sex adoption by stating that a mother is a woman and a father is a man.
The declaration provides a consti𓂃tutional basis for denying the gender identities of transgender people, as well as ignoring the existence of in🔥tersex individuals who are born with sexual characteristics that do not align with binary conceptions of male and female.
In a statement on Monday, government spokesperson Zoltán Kovács wrote that the change is “not an attack on individual self-expression, but a clarificati꧋on that legal norms are based on biological reality🍌.”
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Döbrentey, the ꦕlawyer, said it was “a clear message” for transgender and intersex people: “It is definitely and purely and strictly about humiliating people and ex𒅌cluding them, not just from the national community, but even from the community of human beings.”
The amendm𒆙ent is the 15th to Hungary’s constit🃏ution since Orbán’s party unilaterally authored and approved it in 2011.
Facial recognition to identify demonstrators
Ádám Remport, a lawyer with the HCLU, said that while Hungary has used facial recognition tools since 2015 to assist police in criminal investigations and finding missing persons, the recent law banning Pride allows the tಞechnology to be used in a much b🐼roader and problematic manner.
That includes monitoring and deterring political prot𒁏ests.
“One of the most fundamental problems is its invasiveness, just the sheer scale of the intrusion that happens when🎉 you apply mass surveillance to a crowd,” Remport said.
“More salient in this case is the effect on the freedom of assembly, specifically the chilling effect that arises when people are scared to go out and show their politi🍰cal or ideological beliefs for fear of being persecuted,” he added.
Suspension of citizenship
The amendment passed Monday also allows for Hungarians who hold dual citizenship in a non-European 🍰Economic Area country to have their citizenship suspended for up to 10 years if th♒ey are deemed to pose a threat to public order, public security, or national security.
Hungary has taken steps in recent months൲ to protect its national sovereignty from what it claims are foreign efforts to influence its politics or even topple Orbán’s government.
The self-described “illiberal” leader has accelerated his longstanding efforts to crack down on critics such as media outlets and♚ groups devoted to civil rights and anti-corruption, which he says have undermined Hungary’s sovereignty b🅺y receiving financial assistance from international donors.
In a speech laden with conspiracy theories in March, Orbán compared people who work for such groups to insects and pledged to “eliminate the𒀰 entire shadow army” of foreign-funded “politicians, judges, journalists, pseudo-NGOs and political activists.”
