All the free tickets to Friday night's opening ceremony of Budapest Pride were snapped up in minutes this week, but that gave little cause for celebration to a Hungarian LGBTQ+ community that feels increasingly marginalised by Viktor Orban's nationalist government.
“We only had about 100 free places available. If it was up to us we’d have a venue that could hold 2,000 people . . . but every year it becomes harder and harder to get venues,” says Viktória Radványi, a board member of the Budapest Pride organisation.
“It was almost impossible to find a venue for our opening ceremony . . . For 10 years we haven’t had a big corporate sponsor, because the bigger a company is, the more it is dependent on government contracts, and they feel that if they don’t ‘behave well’ they can say goodbye to those contracts,” she explains.
“This is how Orban’s system thrives. People are becoming afraid to make a comment on Facebook because they could lose their job as a teacher or other state employee . . . Just keep your head down, be quiet, go to work, pay your taxes, have children and you will be left alone – this is the main message.”
A month of Pride events is beginning in Budapest amid international outcry over the Orban government’s introduction of a law to prevent children being exposed to any content that “promotes” homosexuality or gender transition.
At a fiery EU Council meeting this week, Taoiseach Micheál Martin said his government was "extremely annoyed and angry" with developments in Hungary, and Dutch premier Mark Rutte asked why Hungary did not leave the EU if it was ready to betray the bloc's fundamental values so flagrantly.
Sex education
Orban insists the law is only intended to shield children from harmful material and strengthen their parents’ role in providing sex education, and he reminded his critics in Brussels that he was a “freedom fighter” against Hungary’s communist regime in the 1980s – long before his sharp move to the right.
“I am a fighter for their rights . . . Homosexuality was punished [under communism] and I fought for their freedom and their rights. So I am defending the rights of the homosexual guys, but this law is not about that,” he argued.
“It’s not about homosexuals. The law is about to decide what kind of way parents would like to sexually educate the kids, [this] exclusively belonging to the parents. That’s what the law is about.”
Yet activists say Hungary’s LGBT community has felt increasingly insecure since Orban retook power in 2010, with a vow to entrench a system of “illiberal democracy” and “embed the political system in a cultural era”.
"In the 2000s, we saw registered [same-sex] civil partnerships and important equality legislation introduced," recalls Luca Dudits of the Háttér society, an LGBTQ+ rights group based in Budapest.
“We saw Hungary opening up to Europe’s values and it was an era of hope. But since 2010, the ruling Fidesz party started to scapegoat minority groups.”
Orban introduced the EU’s harshest asylum policy (depicting mostly Muslim migrants as a threat to Europe’s security and “traditional values”), banned homelessness in Hungary and sought to enshrine his party’s declared Christian-conservative ideology in law.
Recent constitutional amendments have effectively banned same-sex marriage and adoption, and a 2020 law barred people from changing their gender on official documents, as Fidesz ramped up its rhetoric on social issues and sexuality and fuelled a growing culture war ahead of next year’s parliamentary elections.
Anti-bullying courses
Dudits says the new law will not allow any depiction of LGBTQ+ people to appear on television before a 10pm watershed and is so vaguely worded that many people could succumb to self-censorship on potentially sensitive issues to avoid straying into grey areas.
“There’s also the educational aspect. This law will ban any school programme that ‘portrays’ or ‘propagates’ LGBTQI topics, so that probably means sexual education and anti-bullying programmes,” she says.
“LGBTQI students face very high levels of abuse and bullying in educational settings. According to our surveys, half feel unsafe in [educational] institutions, about 30 per cent had been verbally abused and one-tenth had been physically abused over the 12 months of our survey . . . And so it’s a big problem if you can’t tackle bullying at its root cause, which is usually homophobia and transphobia.”
Given Orban’s depiction of himself as a defender of Hungary against hostile domestic and foreign forces, few expect him to soften his stance or revoke the law before an election campaign that activists fear could fuel intolerance in society.
“People already radicalised against LGBTQ+, people can feel legitimised by this law and we are sure it will increase discrimination,” warns Radványi.
“There has been a rising rate of depression among Hungarian LGBTQ+ people, and they are leaving the country in waves. And it’s not only about LGBTQ+ discrimination – whenever the rule of law is being hurt, whenever democracy is being hurt, whenever Orban’s people purchase another newspaper and shut it down . . . people who feel threatened leave and move to other European countries.”
EU response
Like many of Orbán’s critics, Dudits and Radványi believe the EU has been too timid in tackling the populist leader.
“Since Orbán started his very aggressive LGBT politics, he is not even trying to pretend to conform to European values; his whole thing is showing a big middle finger to western liberal countries,” says Radványi.
“The European Commission needs to use the legal tools that it already has and start an infringement procedure over this new law and withhold funds from Hungary, because this is the only thing Orban cares about – if he can steal less EU money.”
The Budapest Pride festival is set to go ahead, however, and Radványi and its other organisers hope to defy Orban and a growing sense of legal uncertainty with a turnout of more than 20,000 people for the main march on July 24th.
“Because the new law is anything but specific, we can’t be sure how individual police officers or other authorities will interpret it – so our right to freedom of expression and assembly now depends on the attitude of individuals,” says Radványi.
“But we decided to go ahead with everything . . . and even if they decide to ban us, we will do everything in our power to hold a Pride march and we will do civil disobedience,” she explains. “We are really committed not to take any steps back – because basically there is nowhere to take a step back to.”
